The HandleBards is a registered trade mark at the UK Intellectual Property Office (UK00003293107) and is the property of The HandleBards CIO (Registered Charity Number: 1188117), with the HandleBards’ productions operated The HandleBards CIO subsidiary company, Cycling Shakespeare Limited (Registered Company Number: 12516789).
At The HandleBards CIO, your personal privacy is important to us. This notice explains how we collect, store, manage, process, and protect your personal information. It lets you know the types of information we might hold, how and where we’ll use it once it’s been collected and how we will keep it safe. We’ll always aim to be very clear when we ask you to share any information with us and won’t do anything with it that is unexpected.
Sharing your information is not compulsory but providing us with certain pieces of data will help us to give you the best possible service we can.
If you want to contact us about this privacy notice or anything to do with your data at The HandleBards CIO, you can contact us by email at info@handlebards.com
If you wish to stop receiving emails from The HandleBards CIO regarding the HandleBards and any other of the charity’s projects, please click here to manage your preferences.
How We Collect Personal Information
We’ll collect information from you in several different ways. Most of the information comes directly from you and with your consent when you buy a ticket on the website, in person or over the phone. We also gather some information when you browse our website, answer a survey, or email us with feedback.
- We will collect your personal information when:
- You buy tickets or gift vouchers for our productions
- You request to join our mailing lists
- You participate in one of our projects
- You become a member of any membership scheme we may run
- You make a donation to support us and our work
We will always make it clear what data we are collecting from you during these transactions.
Sometimes we may be given your information from third parties, such as other cultural organisations, venues, or co-producers who have asked your permission to share your data.
If your data is provided to us by another person because they feel you may be interested in our work (for example a recommendation by a friend) or from a publicly accessible source (such as a website), we will contact you to tell you where we obtained the information.
The following data and information may also be collected automatically when you visit our website:
- IP address
- Referring website
- Web browser and device
- Cookies
- Time and date
- Web pages visited
- Geographical location
Depending on your own privacy settings you may give us permission to access information from your social media apps.
The Handlebards Cookies Page explains what internet cookies are, how we use them and how you can manage your own personal permissions.
We may also capture your image in photography or in the video recording of a production or special event.
The Types of Personal Information We Collect
We only collect personal information that is essential to our operation as a business and which allows us to fulfil our obligations to our customers, provide good customer service; maintain our records and accounts and to develop and promote our work, on and off stage.
Most of the information we collect is obtained directly from you and may include:
- Prefix and name
- Gender
- Email address
- Date of Birth / age
- Contact phone number(s)
- Payment card details
- Delivery address(s)
- Billing address
- Transaction History
- Records of communications sent to you by the business or received from you
- Photos, film and audio recordings of projects or performances
If you are a participant in one of our workshops or productions we may also collect:
- Contact details for parent, guardian or next of kin
- Dietary requirements or any other sensitive information if required to enable your successful participation
- Passport and other identification details, in instances where international travel is required
Sensitive Personal Information
On occasion we may collect sensitive classes of information. Examples of this might include a disability or the racial or ethnic origin of a person. This data is only collected with the explicit consent of the individual.
If you have a disability we may also process information which will help us make sure that you have the best experience possible when attending one of our shows or workshops, this could include:
- Your request to use assisted hearing
- That you bring an assistance dog
- You use a wheel chair
- You require a seat for a personal assistant.
Where this data is processed for purposes of monitoring and reporting it is always done so anonymously.
How We Use Personal Information
The information we collect about you helps us to provide you with the best service we can; to better understand what you need from us, and to make sure you don’t miss out on information about our new productions, events and special offers.
We process personal information to fulfil a contract with you (e.g. to provide you with a ticket for one of our plays), where we have your consent to do so, where we are legally obliged to and where there is a legitimate interest. For example, we may use your information to:
- Deliver information and process transactions with you
- Improve the service we offer you
- Understand how you want to be contacted. i.e. email, post, phone
- Provide you with information about other goods and services we offer similar to those you have already purchased or enquired about.
- Understand your interests and preferences so that when we contact you the information is relevant to you.
- Create mailing lists to share information about our activities
- To conduct research to understand the geographical location and demographics of our audience
- Notify you about practical issues that could affect your booking (like traffic problems, cancellations or a change to our programme).
- Gather feedback from you directly or by survey
- To alert you to opportunities to support our work
- To carry out basic research to estimate your interest in supporting our work.
- To invite you to participate in research surveys, discussion groups or interviews to understand your opinions about our work.
- To efficiently administer and renew any membership you may have.
- To make sure any communications we send you about supporting The HandleBards & The HandleBards CIO are appropriate.
How We Manage and Protect Personal Information
We will never share your personal information with any third parties for marketing purposes without your prior consent. We will never sell, rent or trade your personal information.
We protect all the personal information we collect. Any collected data is password-protected and stored as encrypted files in secure storage servers.
To fulfil our contract with you it’s sometimes necessary for third party providers to have access to your data so that they can perform services on our behalf (for example, Stripe processes all card payments for us, we use Mailchimp to send out email information).
We’ll only keep information for a maximum of 26 months for the purposes set out in this notice and to fulfil our legal obligations. We’ll never keep more information than we need.
We may need to share personal information with:
Service providers who work on our behalf for the fulfilment of a contract we enter into with you, for example processing card payments, mailing houses, marketing agencies, database services, website hosting or email delivery services.
Research companies who help us to understand our audience to enable us to improve our service.
The police or a regulatory or government authority investigating illegal activities.
Anyone who provides a service on our behalf will enter into an agreement with us and will meet our data security standards. They will only use your data for the clearly defined service that they are providing.
Some of the services on offer on our website use servers that are located outside the European Economic Area (EEA), this means that the personal information you provide could be transferred to countries outside the EEA, for example we may transfer your data to the USA via organisations such as Mailchimp. If your personal information is transferred outside of the EEA in this way, we will take steps to ensure that your privacy rights are protected as outlined here.
Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of the data you transmit to our site as no transmission over the internet is 100% secure; any transmission of your data to us is therefore at your own risk.
Your Rights
Every mailing list email you get from us will include details about how to change your communications preferences and how to unsubscribe from future communications. If you ask us to stop sending you direct marketing communications, we will; you can change your preferences at any time.
You have the right to ask us to amend or stop how we use your personal information including for marketing purposes. You can do this by phoning, emailing, or in writing using the contact details below.
You have the right to get the information we hold on you corrected. If you have any concern about the accuracy of your personal data, please let us know using the details below.
You have the right to be forgotten; if you would like us to remove the personal information we hold about you, please contact us using the details below.
You can request details of personal information that we hold about you by contacting us and providing a description of the information you would like to see, together with proof of your identity.
It is easy to access and amend the personal information that we hold on you. You can do this via email, or in writing using the following details;
- by email, info@handlebards.com
- by post to, 9 St Lukes Drive, Orrell, Wigan WN5 7AU.
You have the right to lodge a complaint with The Information Commissioner’s Office.
Further Information and updates to this notice
The handlebards.com website is owned and operated by The HandleBards CIO (Registered Charity: 1188117). For the purpose of the Data Protection Act 1998 and EU GDPR the data controller is The HandleBards CIO, 9 St Luke’s Drive, Orrell, Wigan, WN5 7AU.
This notice was updated on 25 May 2018. It may be necessary to update it from time to time to reflect changes to our business operations or to legislation. Updates will be posted on this page – please check back from time to time. We may also inform you directly of any changes.
Further information on data protection regulations and laws can be found here: