Polka Respects Your Privacy
240 The Broadway, Wimbledon, London, SW19 1SB
Polka Children’s Theatre Ltd (Polka) is a registered charity no. 256979. We are committed to protecting your privacy and will only use your personal information in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA), Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), General Data Protection Regulation 25 May 2018 (GDPR) and other relevant legislation.
The www.polkatheatre.com website is owned and operated by Polka Theatre.
Our Privacy Policy is set out below: please read it with care as it describes how we will process your data and that of your children.
The Data We Collect
We collect and store personal and non-personal data that you may volunteer as part of booking tickets, making a purchase, becoming a Member or via donation forms, e-news sign-ups, visitor surveys or in connection with a specific project or event. We only collect the information that is necessary to carry out our business or to deliver our charitable objectives, provide the particular service requested and to keep donors/customers informed.
We store personal data under strict safekeeping and confidentiality measures on secure servers operated by Polka and stored securely by Spektrix, our ticketing, marketing and fundraising systems provider. All Spektrix servers are located in a Tier IV data centre in the UK, which has 24/7 onsite security and tightly restricted access control. Only authorised Polka staff who need to process your data will have access to it.
By disclosing your personal information to us via polkatheatre.com, by phone or in writing, you are giving us your consent to collect, store and process your personal information in the manner described in this Notice. The information we hold will be accurate and up-to-date within our knowledge.
Personal information we collect may include:
- Your full name and title and date of birth
- Postal address, email address and phone number
- IP (internet protocol) address
- Details of purchases (tickets, memberships, donations)
- Gift Aid status
- Payment card details (these are not stored, except if you have requested an Automatic Renewal Membership when they are stored securely by an approved third party)
- Your contact and communication preferences – the information you have opted to receive from Polka about our programmes and how you want to receive this
- If you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence.
- We may also ask you to complete surveys that we use for research purposes, or email you to find out if you would like to stay in touch, so that we can ensure data is kept up to date and maintain records. However we will always provide a simple opportunity to opt out of the communications, both when collecting the details and in every message after that. You do not have to respond to messages.
Non-personal information we collect includes: IP addresses (the location of the computer on the internet); web pages accessed; and files downloaded. This helps us to determine how many people use our website, how regularly they visit, and how popular our webpages are. This information does not tell us anything about who you are or where you live, but it does help us monitor and improve our service.
How We May Use Your Data
Where we have legitimate interest we may contact existing customers by phone or mail to:
- Learn about interests and preferences so that we can contact customers with offers that are relevant
- Help us target our marketing and development communications and adverts so that they’re more relevant to customers
- Send relevant invitations to events, press nights or other fundraising opportunities via post or phone if we believe this would be of interest
- 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 via an online or telephone survey or in person. Participation in these is entirely voluntary, so you can choose whether or not to disclose any information requested. We will make it clear whether your response to surveys is anonymous or not and, should you provide any further information, Polka will inform you how it will be used
- Enable us to fundraise effectively because we are a charity
While we cannot ensure or guarantee that loss, misuse or alteration of data will not occur when it is under our control, we use our best efforts to try to prevent this. Unfortunately, the transmission of data across the internet is not completely secure and while we do our best to try to protect the security of your information we cannot ensure or guarantee that loss, misuse or alteration of data will not occur while data is being transferred.
Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of the Polka website, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share a password with anyone.
If you have any questions regarding the Privacy Notice or your information, please email: [email protected] or write to Data Protection, Polka Theatre, 240 The Broadway, London SW19 1SB.
We will use the information you provide to:
- Process sales transactions, donations or other payments and verify financial transactions
- Fulfil your requests – such as applications for membership, donations, competition entries, participation in campaigns and provision of information
- Identify visitors and contributors
- Handle and deliver orders and communicate with you about them
- Provide a personalised service to you when you visit our website. This could include customising the content and/or layout of our pages for individual users
- Record contact we have with you
- Prevent or detect fraud or abuses of our website and enable third parties to carry out technical, logistical or other functions on our behalf in relation to prevention and detection
- Carry out research on the demographics, interests and behaviour of our users and supporters to help Polka gain a better understanding of them and to enable us to improve our service. This research is usually carried out internally by our employees unless we notify you otherwise and have your prior consent.
- Communicate with our customers and supporters
- To notify you about changes to our service.
- To provide you with information, products or services that you request from us or which we feel may interest you, where you have consented to be contacted for such purposes.
Sharing information
To undertake our business activities we sometimes have to share your information with third parties such as our database and IT providers and our mailing house, which handles our direct postal communications with you. We only choose partners we trust and will only pass personal data to them if they have signed a contract that requires them to:
- abide by the requirements of the Data Protection Act
- treat your information as carefully as we would
- only use the information for the purposes it was supplied (and not for their own purposes or the purposes of any other organisation)
- allow us to carry out checks to ensure they are doing all these things.
Some of our service providers may have access to your data in order to perform services on behalf of Polka (a good example of this is Buffallo Fundraising Consultants – a call centre supporting our Name A Seat Campaign in 2020/21). We make sure any organisation who provides a service for Polka enters into an agreement with us and meets our standards for data security. They will not use your data for anything other than the clearly defined purpose that they are providing.
Polka is a National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) and as such receives public funding from Arts Council England. We are therefore required to collaborate with and share personal customer data with other NPOs. This information is only used by publicly-funded arts organisations in England to better understand their audiences and improve their cultural offer. You will be given the option to share your personal data with our relevant NPO partners.
Polka will from time to time share anonymised and aggregated data with third parties for the purpose of analysing data such as sector trends, to help us and the wider theatre sector better understand our audiences. Companies we may share this kind of data with include (but is not limited to) Society of London Theatre (SOLT), UKTheatre and Audience Agency.
We do not share or sell your personal information for other organisations to use for their own purposes, unless it is for the reasons given above.
Fundraising support for Polka’s work
As a charity, Polka fundraises from individuals, companies, public bodies and private trusts and foundations. We want to contact you only when it may be relevant. When fundraising, we may undertake research to explore shared interests with potential supporters. We will not use third-party profiling companies but may use profiling and screening techniques ourselves to analyse your personal data and create a profile of your interests and preferences. We may also make use of additional information about you including where you live, your age and similar demographics, and any publicly-available information (for example through LinkedIn, Companies House, Charity Commission).
Children and Adults at Risk
We are committed to safeguarding children, young people and adults at risk and do all we can to ensure that all who work or volunteer at Polka are safe and inspired by their experience. An important part of doing this is to protect their privacy.
If you are aged 16 or under, please obtain your parent / guardian’s permission every time before you provide any personal information; we will always require their signature on any documentation when you sign up to a Polka project or are contracted to perform with us. We will always require the carer’s signature on similar documentation relating to vulnerable adults.
You choose what information you get from Polka and how you get it
You can opt-in to receive communication about some or all aspects of Polka and our work, and how you wish to communicate with Polka for each or all of these, including by email, post, telephone or text.
Update your permission preferences or stop Polka communication at any time
You can easily update your personal information and communications preferences, or unsubscribe, at any time in the following ways:
- online by logging into My Account
- clicking on the ‘unsubscribe’ link within a newsletter or within an email
- by emailing us at [email protected]
- by writing to Data Protection, Polka Theatre, 240 The Broadway, London SW19 1SB
The permissions above relate to optional communications from Polka. We will continue to send you communications about transactions you make with us, for example when you purchase tickets, or relating to active subscriptions you hold with us such as a membership, or if there is a query regarding a purchase. Each email we send will give you the option to update your preferences. We will consider that your preferences last for five years unless you notify us otherwise.
Polka Family and Friends and Production Supporters’ subscriptions
If you hold an active membership this will include sending you information regarding your subscription renewal, two season brochures per year, your Membership e-news about priority booking, and your Automatic Renewal confirmation (if you have selected this option).
External links
Our website contains links to other sites whose information practice may be different to ours. You should consult other sites’ privacy notices as we have no control over information that is submitted to or collected by third parties. We cannot guarantee the privacy of personal information you transmit over the web or that may be collectable in transit by others.
Access to and deletion of your personal data held by Polka
You have the right to ask for a free copy of the personal information that we hold about you, to correct any inaccuracies in that information, or to ask us to delete such records. Please direct all requests to [email protected] or write to Data Protection, Polka Theatre, 240 The Broadway, London SW19 1SB.
You have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office if we have not been able to satisfactorily resolve a problem about our handling of your personal information. For more information about your Data Protection rights, please visit the website of the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk
Changes to our Privacy Policy
Any changes we may make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by e-mail.
Policy last updated: July 2024