Privacy Policy

Battersea Arts Centre is an arts venue based in London. Our purpose is to inspire people to take creative risks to shape the future. People visit our building to be creative, see a show, explore local heritage, play or relax.

We want to maintain the trust and confidence of every one of our visitors – to both our building and to our website.  Any information you provide us helps us to deliver an improved, personalised and smoother ticket buying process and visitor experience.

Battersea Arts Centre is a charity and a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales at Lavender Hill, London, SW11 5TN. Company number 01569115, registered charity number 282857.

Battersea Arts Centre operates a subsidiary company – BAC Enterprises Limited (company number 03406761) – for our commercial hires and events. Earned income is re-invested back into Battersea Arts Centre’s creative and community projects. Where BAC Enterprises Limited determines why and how personal information is used for commercial hires or events, it acts as a separate data controller. Where Battersea Arts Centre and BAC Enterprises Limited determine those purposes and means together, they act as joint controllers. You may contact Battersea Arts Centre using the details below about personal information handled by either organisation.

Our Contact Details

If you have an online account with Battersea Arts Centre and would like to make changes to your information, or how you’d like to hear from us, you can amend your account at any time by logging in. You can also contact us:

By email: data@bac.org.uk
By post: Battersea Arts Centre, Lavender Hill, London SW11 5TN
By phone: 020 7223 2223

How We Collect Information from You

We collect your information when you interact with Battersea Arts Centre. This could be when you book tickets, buy a membership, make a donation, sign up for e-newsletters or apply to take part in a workshop, event or project. These interactions may occur online, in person or via phone. We also monitor how visitors use our website to help improve the user experience.

We may also collect personal information from publicly available sources as part of our fundraising activities, including information provided by people working on our behalf, such as members of our board. Where we obtain personal information from another source, we will tell you the categories of information obtained, its source, the purposes for which we use it and the applicable lawful basis, normally within one month and, where relevant, no later than our first communication with you or our first disclosure of the information, unless an exemption applies.

We collect personal information when you:  

1. Create an account at bac.org.uk which allows you to:

• Buy tickets
• Buy a membership
• Make a donation
• Book to take part in an event, project or workshop
• Pre-order food and drinks before your visit
• Sign up to mailing list to receive e-newsletters
• Enquire about hiring a space at our venue
• Update your communication preferences

2. Contact us by phone to: 

• Buy tickets
• Buy a membership
• Make a donation
• Book to take part in an event, project or workshop
• Pre-order food and drinks before your visit
• Sign up to mailing list to receive e-newsletters
• Enquire about hiring a space at our venue
• Update your communication preferences
• Give us your access requirements
• Give us your dietary requirements for workshops or events
• Give feedback

3. Visit us in person:

• Buy tickets or theatre tokens
• Buy a membership
• Buy merchandise, such as a programme or playtext
• Make a donation
• Attend an event, project or workshop
• Order food and drinks at our Cafe Bar
• Sign up to mailing list to receive e-newsletters
• Enquire about hiring a space at our venue
• Update your communication preferences
• Give us your access requirements
• Give feedback

5. Contact us by email to:

• Sign up for an event, project or workshop
• Sign up to mailing list to receive e-newsletters
• Enquire about hiring a space at our venue
• Update your communication preferences
• Share access requirements
• Share dietary requirements for workshops, projects or events
• Enter a competition
• Give feedback

4. Contact us by post to: 

• Take part in a project or workshop
• RSVP to an event
• Give feedback

6.  When you visit our website

• Through your IP address given to us by your browser
• Through cookies – please view our Cookie Policy

7. Purchase tickets to Battersea Arts Centre shows through a ticket agent

8. Via publicly available information

We may occasionally research publicly available information to estimate your potential interest in different membership levels or in supporting us further. We use a small number of sources to aid us, such as:

• Google
• Social media
• Official company websites
• Companies House
• Charities Commission
• Donor Boards
• Information in published articles

9. Via CCTV footage when you visit our venue
We operate Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) systems at our premises for the purposes of public safety, crime prevention and detection, and the protection of our property and assets.

• Legal Basis: Our legal basis for processing this data is our legitimate interest in ensuring the security of our staff, visitors, and property (Article 6(1)(f) of the UK/EU GDPR).
• Data Retention Period: We retain all routine CCTV footage for a maximum period of 31 days from the date of recording. After this 31-day window, the footage is automatically and securely overwritten or deleted by our automated management systems.
• Exceptions to Retention: We may hold specific footage beyond the standard 31-day retention period only if it is required as evidence for an active investigation, an insurance claim, legal proceedings, or to comply with a valid law enforcement request. In these instances, the relevant footage will be isolated and retained securely only until the matter is fully resolved.
• Your Rights: Individuals captured by our CCTV cameras have the right to request access to footage of themselves. To submit a Subject Access Request (SAR), please contact our Data Protection Officer at. To help us locate the video, please provide the specific date, time, and location of your visit.

What Information We Collect

We only collect the information that’s necessary to carry out our business or to deliver our charitable objectives, provide the particular service you’ve requested and to keep you informed.

There are occasions where you can choose to not provide us with information we require, but this may impact our ability to provide the service you are requesting.

The type of information we may collect is outlined below.

If you are buying tickets:

• Prefix and full name
• Email address
• Contact phone number(s)
• Payment card information required to process your payment. Card payments are handled by our payment service provider, and the information retained by Battersea Arts Centre depends on the payment method and system used.
• Billing address
• Delivery address
• Organisation (if you are booking tickets on behalf of a group)
• Contact preferences
• Access requirements – we only have this information if you chose to give it to us so we can support your visit. E.g. a preference for an aisle seat or a seat near a BSL interpreter.

If you are a member or supporter, or attending an event, project or workshop, we may require additional information such as:

• Dietary requirements
• Emergency contact name, phone number and address
• Permission for photography or filming
• Job title
• Name of college/university
• Course information
• Details of any prior experience relating to the project or workshop
• Equal opportunities forms
• Publicly available information about you

Some access requirements, dietary requirements and equal opportunities information may reveal health information, religious or philosophical beliefs, racial or ethnic origin, sexual orientation or other special category information. We process this information only where an Article 6 lawful basis and an applicable condition under Article 9 of the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 are satisfied. Depending on the circumstances, this may include explicit consent, protection of vital interests, substantial public interest with appropriate safeguards, or information the individual has manifestly made public. We restrict access to this information and use it only for the stated purpose.

We keep a record of your relationship with us:
We keep a record of your interactions with us in our database, such as shows you have purchased tickets to, when you have had an active membership, projects you have participated in and if you have received, opened or clicked through our emails. This helps us improve our services.

If you visit our website:
We may collect an automatically populated IP address when you use our website or email service. This public IP address is a unique number which allows a computer, group of computers or other internet connected device to browse the internet. The log file records the time and date of your visit, the pages that were requested, the referring website (if provided) and your internet browser. This information is collected to help diagnose and manage the website, to audit the geographical make-up of users, and to establish how they have arrived at the website.

We use cookies which retain information about your online behaviour, preferences and settings. Please view our Cookie Policy

Ticket agents and third parties

If you book tickets to a Battersea Arts Centre show through a ticket agent, we will obtain your full name, in order to process your booking.

Third party organisations should not pass on your data to us without your knowledge and only if it is required in the performance of a contract. You should check their Privacy Policy when you provide your information to understand fully how they will process and safeguard your data.

Social media

Depending on your settings or the privacy policies for social media services like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, you may give us permission to access information from those accounts or services, such as your online behaviour. The majority of this behaviour is anonymised. For more information on how to control your privacy settings for these services, go to the following links:

Facebook – Privacy Policy
Instagram – Privacy Policy
Twitter/X – Privacy Policy
YouTube – Privacy Policy
Soundcloud – Privacy Policy

Why we collect information and how we use it

The main reason we collect information is to provide the service(s) you have requested from us.

We will send direct marketing by email, text or similar electronic message only where we have your consent or another permission available under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003, as amended. Where permitted, this may include the charitable-purpose soft opt-in for people who have expressed an interest in or offered support for our charitable purposes, provided we gave them a clear opportunity to opt out when we collected their details and in every subsequent message. You can withdraw consent or opt out at any time.

The lawful basis we use depends on the purpose for which we process your personal information. We rely on contract where processing is necessary to provide a product, booking, membership or other service you have requested; legal obligation where the law requires us to process or retain information; consent where you have made a freely given, specific and informed choice; and legitimate interests where the processing is necessary for our charitable, operational, security, audience-development or fundraising interests and those interests are not overridden by your rights and interests. Where we rely on legitimate interests, we assess the necessity and impact of the processing and you may object. We do not treat the provision of information as consent where another lawful basis applies.

We collect personal information in order to:

Provide a service or carry out a contract with you:

• To fulfil ticket, merchandise, donation and membership requests
• To process payments
• To alert you to priority booking periods or invite you to events as per your membership benefits
• Contact you with important information relating to your booking or purchase, such as cancellations
• Provide the best possible customer service such as: confirming your order, reminding you of an upcoming booking, seeking feedback or letting you know of any show or venue changes that affect your visit.

Where we have your consent to:

• Send you updates via email about what’s on, ticket or membership offers and news about our organisation.
• Email you about our fundraising activities and ways that you can support Battersea Arts Centre.
• Share your details with the artists and theatre companies that created the shows you have booked for. (These organisations should contact you to let you know how they collected your data and to check that you’re still happy to hear from them. You will always be able to opt out of their communications by contacting them directly).

You can amend your preferences at any time by contacting us or by logging in to your online account.

Where we have a legal obligation to:

• Where processing is necessary to comply with a legal obligation, we will use your personal information for that purpose. We ordinarily rely on our legitimate interests, rather than legal obligation, when using CCTV to protect people and property, prevent or investigate incidents, or establish, exercise or defend legal claims, and when detecting and reducing fraud or credit risk, unless a specific legal duty applies.

Where we have legitimate interest to:

• Learn about your interests and preferences so that we can contact you with information that is relevant to you
• Help us target our marketing and development communications and adverts so that they’re more relevant to you
• Send relevant invitations to events, press nights or other fundraising opportunities via post or phone if we believe this would be of interest
• We may use your pseudonymised details to show you advertising on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram or on other websites you use. We may also analyse booking history, engagement information and publicly available information to group audiences by likely interests and make our communications and advertising more relevant. This profiling does not produce decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects on you. You may object at any time to profiling for direct marketing, and we will stop using your information for that purpose. Where cookies or similar technologies are used for targeted advertising, we will obtain any consent required by law and provide further information in our Cookie Policy.
• Classify our audience into groups or segments, using booking and publicly available information (these segments help us to understand our audience better and ensure we’re sending relevant messages.
• Measure and understand how our audiences respond to a variety of marketing activity so we can ensure our activity is well targeted, relevant and effective.
• Undertake audience research (such as surveys) to analyse and continually improve the services we offer including our live programme, website and our other products.
• Ensure we are maximising our ticket sales wherever possible
• Enable us to fundraise effectively because we are a charity

Where we have public interest to:

• Where processing is necessary for a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in us, we will identify the relevant task and legal basis and explain the personal information involved.

More information about our fundraising activities:

We are a registered charity and we rely on charitable support to achieve our purpose to inspire people to take creative risks to shape the future, and to create opportunities for people of all ages and backgrounds to access our shows and projects.

We are committed to fundraising best practice and abide by the Fundraising Regulator’s key principles and behaviours of a fundraising organisation: to be legal, open, honest and respectful. We undertake to comply with relevant law and regulations, including the Proceeds of Crime Act, Data Protection, Tax and Gift Aid legislation and Charity Commission guidance.

Every year, we need to raise approximately £1.7million of our income from voluntary donations to deliver our work – this represents roughly a third of our income. To do so, we aim to better understand both our audience’s engagement with Battersea Arts Centre to ascertain any potential interest in supporting us further, and to prospect individuals, corporates, trusts and foundations through specific research.

We undertake research on our data, through publicly available information and through prospecting/fundraising companies in order to ensure that we can present people with appropriate information and opportunities to learn more, and potentially support Battersea Arts Centre, in a number of ways:

Our Current Audiences

If you are a Battersea Arts Centre member or supporter, or have chosen (or have previously chosen) to make a donation, we may ask for your consent to email you about specific fundraising email communications.

We aim to ensure our communications are personal, relevant and timely, and designed to provide the most rewarding engagement with our work.

We will not email you with a fundraising ask without your consent.

Companies, Trusts and Foundations

We may use research from a number of different publicly available sources to identify potential companies, trusts and foundations who may aid us in our fundraising activities. This may include official websites of companies, charities and other arts organisations. In addition to this research we also make use of company, director and shareholder information from publicly available, officially registered information providers, such trustfundraising.org, LinkedIn and 192.com.

If we have identified a specific company or trust and foundation through this research that we believe may be interested in supporting our work, we may contact the people specifically connected to these bodies via publicly available contact information, such as a relevant work email address. If we identify an individual, we may contact them via phone or by post. As a charity, we believe that this in the legitimate interest of our fundraising needs. We will always ensure we conduct an appropriate legitimate interest assessment to ensure that we are not infringing on your rights.

Your Rights

Depending on the circumstances and the lawful basis we rely on, you may have the right to be informed about our use of your personal information; obtain access to it; have inaccurate information corrected; have information erased; restrict our use of it; receive information you provided in a portable format; object to processing based on legitimate interests; object at any time to direct marketing, including related profiling; and obtain safeguards in relation to solely automated decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects. These rights are not absolute and exemptions may apply. You may also withdraw consent at any time where we rely on consent, without affecting processing carried out before withdrawal. We will normally respond to a valid request within one month and will tell you if we need more time.

To do this, you can contact us by phone, email or post using the contact details set out above. Or, if you have an online account with us, you can amend your details and contact preferences at any time by logging in.

Every email we send to you will include details on how to change your contact preferences or unsubscribe from future communications.

You may ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you by contacting us at data@bac.org.uk or using the postal or telephone details above. Please describe the information you are seeking. We may ask for information reasonably necessary to confirm your identity, but we will not request more identification than is proportionate. We do not usually charge a fee, although the law permits a reasonable fee or refusal in limited circumstances.

You also have the right to get information held about you by us corrected. If you have any concern about the accuracy of your personal data or if you would like us to remove the personal information we hold about you, please contact us using the contact details set out above.

If you have concerns, please contact us first so that we can try to resolve them. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK supervisory authority. Further information about making a complaint is available at www.ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint. You may also seek a judicial remedy.

If you are under 18, we explain how we use your personal information in language appropriate to your age. We do not require parental or guardian consent merely because you are under 18. Where consent is the relevant lawful basis and the law requires parental authorisation for an online service offered directly to a child, we will obtain and verify that authorisation as required. In other circumstances, we will identify the appropriate lawful basis, consider the child’s competence and best interests, and collect only the information needed for the activity. A parent, guardian or child may contact us using the details above with questions about how we use a child’s information.

How We Protect Your Data

We’re committed to protecting your personal information. We adopt robust and appropriate technologies and policies to protect it from unauthorised access and improper use.

Some of our suppliers may process personal information outside the United Kingdom. When we make a restricted transfer, we ensure that it is covered by a lawful transfer mechanism, such as UK adequacy regulations, an appropriate safeguard including the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses, or an applicable statutory exception. Where appropriate safeguards are used, we carry out the required transfer risk assessment and apply supplementary measures where necessary. You may contact us for further information about the relevant safeguard and how to obtain a copy.

Where a supplier processes personal information in the United States, we verify the transfer mechanism that applies to that supplier. This may include the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework for a participating and appropriately certified US recipient, another UK adequacy regulation, or an appropriate safeguard such as the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or UK Addendum, together with any required transfer risk assessment and supplementary measures.

We keep personal information only for as long as necessary for the purposes described in this policy and to meet legal, accounting, tax, safeguarding, fraud-prevention and dispute-resolution requirements. Retention periods depend on the type of information, the purpose for which it is used, its sensitivity and associated risk, the duration of our relationship with you and applicable legal limitation periods. For example, ticket-purchasing records may ordinarily be retained for up to ten years after your last engagement where this is justified by those purposes. Membership and supporter records are reviewed periodically and are not retained indefinitely without a continuing purpose and lawful basis. We securely delete or anonymise information when it is no longer required.

If you ask us to stop sending direct marketing communications to you, we will retain the minimum amount of information required to ensure we adhere to such requests.

Who we share information with

Battersea Arts Centre will never share, sell or trade your personal information to any third parties for marketing purposes without your prior consent.

We will ask for your consent to share personal information with artists and theatre companies whose shows you have booked for at Battersea Arts Centre.

We share name and address information with suppliers fulfilling mailings for Battersea Arts Centre. We make sure anyone who provides a service for us enters into an agreement with us and meets our standards for data security.

We use service providers to help us provide services, communicate with audiences, process payments, maintain our systems, analyse engagement and support fundraising. Some act as processors and may use personal information only on our documented instructions, subject to contractual confidentiality and security requirements. Others may act as independent or joint controllers for particular activities; where this applies, we explain their role and the relevant sharing arrangement.

Examples:

• With our payment provider in order to process credit card transactions: Name on card, credit card number, billing address, CVV, amount of transaction and order number.
• With our merchant in order to complete modulus and know your customer checks: Sort code and account number.
• With our ticketing system provider Spektrix who provide support should our ticketing system require maintenance.
• With Dotmailer to produce e-newsletters, pre- & post-show emails: name and email address.
• With Service providers who aggregate data in order for us to do benchmark reporting across the industry, specifically The Audience Agency for the purposes of the Audience Finder initiative. Information on the data they collect can be found on their website here.
• With Purple Seven to benchmark our organisation against other venues. This allows us to gain a further understanding of our audience’s behaviour and insight into potential new audiences.
• With funding bodies (we will respect anonymity where requested).
• With fundraising and/or prospecting companies if you gave your consent to receive updates on ways you can support us.
• With artists and theatre companies if you gave your consent when purchasing tickets. In these instances, we may supply your name and email address to that specific company only.
• Where legally required to do so (for example, under a court order) or when requested by the police or a regulatory or government authority investigating illegal activities.

Battersea Arts Centre is not responsible for the privacy notices and practices of other websites, even if they are accessed using links from our website. We recommend that you review the privacy notice of each website you visit and contact its owner if you have concerns or questions. We use appropriate technical and organisational measures designed to protect personal information against accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure and unauthorised access. No method of transmission or storage can be guaranteed to be completely secure, but this does not reduce our responsibility to protect personal information in accordance with applicable law. If a personal data breach is likely to result in a high risk to your rights and freedoms, we will inform you without undue delay unless an applicable exception applies.

Updates to this Policy

This policy may be updated to take into account changes we have made, or to reflect changes to regulation or legislation. Please check back from time to time. We may also inform you of any changes where we hold an appropriate email address for you.

Complaints about how we use your personal information

If you have a concern or complaint about how we collect, use, disclose or protect your personal information, or about how we have handled a request to exercise your data protection rights, please contact us:

• Email: data@bac.org.uk
• Post: Battersea Arts Centre, Lavender Hill, London SW11 5TN
• Telephone: 020 7223 2223

Please provide your name and contact details, a clear description of your concern, details of any relevant communications or requests, and what you would like us to do to resolve the matter. Please do not send us more personal information than is necessary.

We will acknowledge your complaint without undue delay, investigate it fairly and keep you informed where further time or information is required. We will provide you with the outcome of our investigation and explain any action we have taken or propose to take.

You have the right to complain at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection. We would welcome the opportunity to consider your concern first, but you are not required to complete our complaints process before contacting the ICO.

Information about making a complaint is available at www.ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint. You may also have the right to seek a remedy through the courts.

Further information on data protection regulations and laws:

Data Protection information by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)

Fundraising Regulator – code of fundraising practice