1. Introduction

The National Opera Studio is committed to protecting your personal information. It’s your information, it’s personal, and we respect that. We also want to maintain the trust and confidence of every one of our audience members and supporters, as well as each visitor who uses the National Opera Studio website.

Our Privacy Policy gives you detailed information on when and why we collect your personal information, how we use it and how we keep it secure.

2 How we collect your personal information

Generally, we collect your information when you decide to interact with us. This could include purchasing tickets online, over the phone or in person or it could be where you sign up to receive emails from us. We also look at how our visitors use our website.

We collect information when you;

• Buy tickets,
• Join as a Friend
• Make a donation
• Join our mailing list
• Register for auditions, short courses and other events
• Visit our website: we use cookies to help make the experience of using our website better and to personalise the service you receive from us – this means we will remember your previous visits and track the pages on our website that you visit. For more information please see our cookie policy. When you visit www.nationaloperastudio.org.uk the National Opera Studio’s web server automatically records your public internet protocol (‘IP’) address and also generates an anonymous log file.
• From time to time, we may also get data about you from third parties. This could include other artistic venues where you have seen the National Opera Studio’s work or partners that we have run events in collaboration with. This includes other Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisations.

3 The types of information we collect

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

When you create an account with us, register on our website or purchase tickets or other items from us online, by post or phone we need to collect information from you in order to provide the service you are requesting.

We may collect:

• Prefix and name
• Gender
• Email address
• Date of Birth
• Contact phone number(s)
• Payment card details. Please note, we will not hold payment information for any longer than it takes to process your transaction.
• Delivery address(s)
• Billing address

When visiting our website we may collect the following information:

• Automatically populated IP address: a 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 version. 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.
• Cookies: for further information about Cookies and how the National Opera Studio uses them, please read the National Opera Studio Cookie Policy

4. Applying for an audition

By applying to audition to the Studio you agree to us processing personal data contained in your application form, or other data which the Studio may obtain from you or other people. For purposes connected with your audition, health and safety or for any other legitimate reason.

We do not share personal and financial information provided to us in the payment process, nor do we share this information with 3rd parties.

5. Information we may collect from you
   We may collect and process the following data about you:

• Information that you provide by filling in forms on our site www.nationaloperastudio.org.uk (‘our site’). This includes information provided at the time of registering to use our site, applying to audition, or requesting further information.
• If you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence
• We may also give you the option of completing surveys that we use for research purposes, although these are usually anonymous
• Details of transactions you carry out through our site and of the fulfilment of your application

Details of your visits to our site include, but are not limited to, traffic data, location data, weblogs and other communication data, whether this is required for billing purposes or otherwise and the resources that you access.

Data Hygiene

From time to time we may screen our database against recognized data hygiene file such as National Change of Address file and cleanse our file or correct inaccurate data. We may also update inaccurate data if the information is available.

Social Media

Depending on your settings or the privacy policies for social media and messaging services like Facebook, WhatsApp or X, you may give us permission to access information from those accounts or services.

Information available publicly

We may include information found in places such as Companies House and information that has been published in articles/ newspapers.

6. Why We Collect Your Personal Information and How We Use It

The information we hold on you will be used in a number of ways. Here are the main ones: to provide a service you have requested, offer you a personalised experience and understand our audience’s needs better, inform you of events or updates you’ve asked for or contact you if we need to obtain or provide additional information (e.g. repertoire or artist changes).

Specifically, we use your information we collect in the following ways:

To carry out our business and to provide a service or carry out a contract with you:

• To fulfil ticket, donation and membership requests.
• Process payments. Please note that the National Opera Studio does not store any Credit Card or other payment information once the transaction has been completed.
• Provide the best possible customer services and to help us with internal administration.
• Contact you with important information relating to your booking or purchase, such as confirming your order, reminding you of an upcoming performance you’ve booked for or letting you know about cast changes or other developments that may affect your visit.

Where we have your consent:

• Send you updates via email about what’s on, offers and news or about supporting us.
• Email you about a specific topic you’ve requested to hear more on such as short courses or auditions

Where we have justifiable reason (including legal obligation and legitimate interest):

• Learn about your interests and preferences so that we can contact you with information that is relevant to you.
• Help us target our marketing communications and adverts so that they’re more relevant to you.
• Use your anonymised details to show you advertising on such Social Media platforms as Facebook and Instagram or via other third party advertising that may appear on other websites you use. The information shared with these platforms is anonymised to protect your personal data.
• For classifying 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 to each group.
• 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 consumer research: we may contact you to ask you to participate in consumer research either via an online or telephone survey or in person. You are under no obligation to participate in research and, should you provide any further information, the national Opera Studio will inform you how any further information will be used.
• Analyse and continually improve the services we offer including our artistic output, our website and our other products.
• To keep our database accurate and relevant, for example, using National Change of Address.
• Detect and reduce fraud and credit risk.

For a small number of our audience, where we want to better understand people’s engagement with the national Opera Studio and their potential interest in supporting us further:

We are a registered charity (No. 1332955) and rely heavily on voluntary contributions from our audience and other funders. Based on the frequency of your visits and purchasing patterns, we may promote our memberships to you or ask you for additional support for our work. If you are a member or donor, we may use a number of basic research tools to estimate your potential interest in other membership levels or in supporting us further.

From experience we know that our donors would expect us to have ascertained a level of interest and considered the appropriateness of a request for donations before approaching them. We therefore research some of our customers and supporters and occasionally potential supporters to find shared interests. This research may include information we hold on them (for example, payment methods and postcodes) and publicly-available information (for example, through social media, Companies House, Charity Commission), where they live, their age and similar demographics.  In some cases, we will rely on legitimate interest for processing data of potential supporters. This means we may carry out initial research on potential higher level donors prior to requesting consent. This information will also help us to meet our obligations to protect the charity from financial fraud and risk.  We do not use wealth screening companies to analyse our data.

7. How we handle your information and other organizations

The National Opera Studio will never share, sell, rent or trade your personal information to any third parties.

Some of our service providers may have access to process data in order to perform services on our behalf.  This includes our payment providers, our IT contractors, our mailing list supplier, and our accounting software. We make sure anyone who provides a service for the National Opera Studio enters into an agreement with us and meets our standards for data security and privacy. They will not use your data for anything other than the clearly defined purpose relating to the service that they are providing, and will never contact you regarding anything not related to your relationship with us.

8. How we protect your data

The National Opera Studio is committed to protecting the personal information you entrust to us. We adopt robust and appropriate technologies and policies, so the information we have about you is protected from unauthorized access and improper use e.g. your online account is encrypted and our own network is protected.

As part of the services offered to you through the National Opera Studio website, the personal information you provide may be transferred to countries outside the European Economic Area (EEA). By way of example, this may happen if any of the computer servers used to host the website are located in a country outside of the EEA. If the National Opera Studio transfers your personal information outside of the EEA in this way, we will take steps to ensure that your privacy rights continue to be protected as outlined in this privacy notice.

The National Opera Studio may transfer your data to the USA to organizations such as Facebook, Google or Mailchimp. The USA has weaker data protection laws than that of the EEA and therefore we will ensure that only organisations who are a part of the EU privacy shield initiative will handle your personal information. More details on this certification can be found at www.privacyshield.gov

We will keep your information only for as long as is reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this privacy notice and to fulfil our legal obligations. We will not keep more information than we need. The retention period will vary according to the purpose, for example if purchasing a ticket only, we will typically keep your data for up to ten years from the date of your last transaction whereas if you have pledged a legacy to the National Opera Studio, we will hold your details until notified by your executors. For further information about how long we will keep your information, please contact the Data Protection Manager using the contact details outlined in this notice.

If you ask us to stop sending direct marketing communications to you, we will keep the minimum amount of information (e.g. name, address or email address) to ensure we adhere with such requests.

9. Your choices

You have the right to obtain from us an electronic or paper copy of all Personal Information concerning yourself, or to speak to a National Opera Studio representative on any matter, by e-mailing [email protected] or writing to the Executive Director, National Opera Studio, The Clore Building, 2 Chapel Yard Wandsworth High Street, London SW18 4HZ. If you decide not to use our services any further or to instruct us to cease using your Personal Information as contemplated in this Policy, and notify us either in writing or by email as mentioned above, we shall destroy any retained Personal Information.

Users Under 18

If you are under 18, please ensure that you obtain your parent/guardian’s consent beforehand whenever you provide Personal Information to the website. Users without such consent are not allowed to provide us with Personal Information.

Cookie Policy

Cookies are small pieces of information that are stored by your browser on your computer’s hard drive. They make it possible for us to provide our online ticketing service and track visitor statistics, such as returning visitors.

We use cookies to manage the shopping baskets on our ticketing pages as well as logging in and using your account pages. The cookies used for these functions are temporary cookies that are removed once the transaction has been completed or you log out. It is not possible to purchase anything on our website without accepting these cookies.

This website uses the following non-essential cookies:

Google Analytics cookies
These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, so we don’t know who is using our site. We use the information on how people use our website to compile reports and to help us improve the site. You can go to http://www.google.com/analytics/learn/privacy.html to find out more about Google Analytics cookies and how to opt-out of them.

Email and web tracking cookies used by the National Opera Studio:
These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors who have subscribed to our email lists are using the website. This data is not anonymised and we use the information to help improve our email communications and target specifically-tailored messages for our email subscribers. You can review and change your settings using the link just below.

Cookies used by Twitter and Facebook
These cookies provide information on visitors to X and Facebook, check whether users are logged in to either platform and set application cookies for Twitter and Facebook.

This website also uses advertising cookies and we offer the option to opt out of these to prevent them being set on your computer.

For more information on cookies, please visit:
aboutcookies.org
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Updated September 2024