Festival Policies: Privacy Notice

This privacy notice (the “Privacy Notice”) applies to all personal information processing activities carried out by the Blackwater Valley Opera Festival (BVOF).
It gives you information about the way the Blackwater Valley Opera Festival (“BVOF”) collects and uses Personal Data about Data Subjects, which is known as “Personal Data” under the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”).

You should read through this Notice to fully understand the basis upon which we collect your Personal Data, how we use it, where we store it and to whom it is disclosed.

 

Commitment to Privacy

We are committed to protecting your Personal Data and right to privacy. We will always keep your Personal Data safe and comply with applicable data protection legislation from time to time in place.

 

Who We Are

When we talk about “the Blackwater Valley Opera Festival”, or “us” or “we” in this Notice, we are talking about the Blackwater Valley Opera Festival. The Blackwater Valley Opera Festival is a not for profit company, limited by guarantee, and founded to bring world class opera and music to very special settings in this part of the sunny South East of Ireland. A particular emphasis is put on showcasing new talent, and introducing these timeless art forms to new, and younger audiences.

 

Legal Basis for Collecting, Storing and Processing Personal Data

The law on data protection sets out a number of different reasons for which the Blackwater Valley Opera Festival may collect and process your personal data, including:

• Consent: You have provided your consent to us using the Personal Data in that way, for example, where you provide us with consent to send you marketing communication about our services or events.
• Legitimate Interest: Its use is in accordance with our legitimate interests outlined in this notice.
• Contract: Its use is necessary in relation to a service or a contract that you have entered into or because you have asked for something to be done so you can enter into a contract with us.

 

How we collect your information

We collect the following information:

• information you give to us;
• information that we learn about you through our relationship with you;
• information that we gather from publicly available sources;
• when you have given a third-party permission to share with us the information they hold about you.
• When you engage with us on social media.

 

Information we collect & how we use Personal Data

We will only use and share your information where it is necessary for us to carry out our lawful business activities. We have described the purposes for which your information may be used in detail below.

1. Contractual Necessity

To provide our services to you, and to fulfil our contract with you, we will process your Personal Data for the performance of a contract which you have entered into with us, or to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract. We will use your Personal Information to:

• Process applications for Membership.
• Register you as a new ticket buyer/customer.
• Manage and administer your account.
• Communicate with you in relation to your Membership, or the products and services you receive from us.
• Manage and respond to correspondence, concerns, queries or complaints.
• Carry out our obligations arising from the contract we have entered with you or with the organisation you are representing.
• Send you service-related information by email and/or mail and/or any other communication means (e.g. your event booking confirmation);
• Provide you with the information, products and services that you request from us.
• Where it is necessary, involve a third-party service provider for the performance of any contract we enter into with you
• Possible establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims

 2. To manage our business for our legitimate interests

There are times when we will rely on legitimate interests to process your personal data, particularly when it is not practical to obtain consent. We will always consider if it is fair and balanced to do so and if it is within your reasonable expectations. We will balance your rights and our legitimate interests to ensure that we use your personal information in ways that are not unduly intrusive or unfair.
The following processing activities are carried out for the purposes of a legitimate interest pursued by the Festival:

3. Events

For us to achieve our educational aims and objectives, we organise and run a number of events during the annual Blackwater Valley Opera Festival. These include opera, recital, concert and related events at various venues.  We keep a record of your participation at our events as an attendee.

4. Attendees

If you register for or purchase tickets for a Blackwater Valley Opera Festival event and you are a Member, we will access the information in your Member account to provide you with information and services associated with the event. If you are not a Member and you register for one of our events, we will collect your name and contact information, which we will store in our database(s) and use to provide you with information and services associated with the event.

5. Videography and Photography

When you attend an event at the Blackwater Valley Opera Festival you may be photographed and/or filmed/recorded due to your presence at the event. The purpose of that photography or filming/recording is the legitimate interest of Blackwater Valley Opera Festival in using audio-visuals to publicise and promote the Blackwater Valley Opera Festival and to assist the Blackwater Valley Opera Festival in the provision of its charitable aims.

Appropriate data may also be shared publicly for communications purposes on digital platforms (including social platforms), and through publications, media (including newspapers, television and radio), and advertisements.

When we intend to record or photograph an event, we will inform you of this fact via our Public Announcement system. Clear visible signage will also be placed around the area(s) where the event is taking place.

 

Volunteers

If you volunteer for the Blackwater Valley Opera Festival, you provide us with your Personal Data. We use this information to keep a record of your participation and to correspond with you in relation to and for the administration and management of our event.

 

Fundraising & Philanthropy

We work to secure philanthropic support for the Blackwater Valley Opera Festival. To do this, we maintain a database that contains Personal Data collected by us during its relationships with Members and other sponsors. Most of the information we hold is obtained directly from you, but there may be some additional data which we have been obtained from publicly available sources.

Unless you have requested otherwise, this Personal Information will be used and processed for a range of engagement activities and programmes. This processing is carried out to assist us in securing funds for the provision of our charitable aims.

 

Maintenance of “do not contact” lists (suppression lists)

If you ask the Blackwater Valley Opera Festival not to contact you by email at a certain email address, the Blackwater Valley Opera Festival will retain a copy of that email address on its “master do not send” list in order to comply with your no-contact request.We may compile and process your information to help us understand trends in our customer behaviour and to understand our risks better, including for providing management information, operational and data risk management.

Marketing

We may use your identity, contact, transactional history, profile data and communications data to form a view on what we think you may like, or what may be of interest to you, and to send you details of products and offers which may be relevant for you.

 

Where you have given us permission

There are situations when we will ask for your consent to process your personal data. Examples of such situations are processing of payment transaction data for marketing purposes, or for some processing of special categories of data. The consent will contain information on that specific processing activity. If you have given consent to a processing of your personal data, you can always withdraw the consent.

 

Your correspondence with the BVOF

If you correspond with us by email, the postal service, or other form of communication, we may retain such correspondence and the information contained in it and use it to respond to your inquiry; to notify you of the Blackwater Valley Opera Festival events, or other services; or to keep a record of your complaint, and the like.

 

Sensitive Information

We may also obtain sensitive information if you voluntarily provide it to us (for example, if you require wheelchair assistance or if you have dietary requirements).

 

Marketing

We may send you marketing communication (for example, details of upcoming events):

• if you have registered for an event, and you have not opted out of receiving marketing (in accordance with your preferences, as explained below);
• by email if you have signed up for email newsletters;
• if you have provided us with your details when you entered a competition and you have consented to receiving such marketing (in accordance with your preferences, as explained below).

We will ask you for your preferences in relation to receiving marketing communications by email, post, SMS and other communication channels.

You will always have full control of your marketing preferences. If you do not wish to continue receiving marketing information from us at any time, you can unsubscribe or ‘opt-out’ by using the unsubscribe button and following the link included in the footer of any marketing email.

 

Blackwater Valley Opera Festival Websites

This Notice applies to the following Website:

• blackwatervalleyopera.ie

On our Website, Personal Data (such as your name, address, telephone number, or email address) is collected when you voluntarily submit it through a website form, such as during a ticket booking process, or when you sign up to receive our newsletters or other publications.

Other information that may also constitute Personal Data (such as your browser type, operating system, IP address, domain name, number of times you visited our Websites, dates you visited our Website, and the amount of time you spent viewing the Website) may be collected via cookies and other tracking technologies (such as transparent GIF files). Aggregate Information (such as how many times visitors log onto these Website) may also be collected.

Our Cookies policy is described further on the neighbouring tab.

We have set out below a list of third parties with whom we share your data and the reason for such sharing.

1. Contractors

Your Personal Data may be transferred or accessed by third-party service providers. We have retained these service providers to help manage our business and deliver our events and services on our behalf as described in this Privacy Notice. Such Service Providers are required under their contract with us, to handle your Personal Data in accordance with applicable laws and principles related to privacy and data protection. Our service providers are given the information they need to perform their designated functions and are not authorised to use or disclose Personal Data for their own marketing or other purposes.

2. Card Payment Providers

For credit card payments we employ a third party to process these payments on our behalf. This third party will only have access to the Personal Data which you provide directly to them when you make a credit card payment. They are required under their contract with us to process this Personal Data securely and in accordance with all relevant Data Protection laws. We will not collect or store any credit card details; this third party being the sole data controller of that data. When you pay for any goods, you will be taken to a link to this third party’s website in order to conclude the sale. The data you provide to this third party will be processed in accordance with their Privacy Notice and the terms and conditions on their website. The Blackwater Valley Opera Festival has no control over how this third party uses your information and is therefore not responsible and is not liable for the way they process your Personal Data. Ensure that you have read and understood their terms before providing your Personal Data.

3. IT Back-up Providers

To hold information, for our legitimate business purposes.

4. IT Service Providers

To store data, for IT security and service issues and for our legitimate business purposes.

5. Email Service Providers

To help us to run our business effectively, for our legitimate business purposes.

6. An Gardaí Siochána, Irish Revenue, and other Irish Statutory bodies

To comply with our legal obligations, we will share your information with law enforcement agencies, judicial bodies, government entities, tax authorities and/or regulatory bodies.

 

Retention of Your Personal Data

We will retain your Personal Data for as long as is reasonably necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, as explained in this Notice. In some circumstances we may retain your Personal Data for longer periods of time, for instance where we are required to do so in accordance with legal, regulatory, tax or accounting requirements. In specific circumstances we may retain your Personal Data for longer periods of time so that we have an accurate record of your dealings with us in the event of any complaints or challenges, or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation relating to your Personal Data or dealings.

Where we have obtained your Personal Data in order to provide you with marketing information for our products and services, your Personal Data will be stored by us only as long as you do not change your mind to receive such materials from us, in order to avoid future contact with you for marketing purposes. We maintain a data retention schedule which we apply to Blackwater Valley Opera Festival in our care. Where your Personal Data is no longer required we will ensure it is securely deleted.

 

Data Subject Rights

By law, you have a number of rights when it comes to your Personal Data. Further information and advice about your rights can be obtained from the supervisory authority, the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (www.dataprotection.ie).

Rights	What does this mean?
The right to be informed	You have the right to be provided with clear, transparent and easily understandable information about how we use your Personal Data and your rights. This is why we are providing you with the information in this Notice.
The right of access	You have the right to obtain access to your Personal Data, and certain other information.  This is so you’re aware and can check that we’re using your Personal Data in accordance with data protection law.
The right to rectification	You are entitled to have your Personal Data corrected if it’s inaccurate or incomplete. We may seek to verify the accuracy of the data before rectifying it.
The right to erasure	This is also known as ‘the right to be forgotten’ and, in simple terms, enables you to request the deletion or removal of your Personal Data where there’s no compelling reason for us to keep using it. This is not a general right to erasure; there are exceptions, for example: compliance with a legal obligation; the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.
The right to restrict processing	You have rights to ‘block’ or suppress further use of your Personal Data. When processing is restricted, we can still store your Personal Data, but may not use it further. We keep lists of people who have asked for further use of their Personal Data to be ‘blocked’ to make sure the restriction is respected in future.
The right to data portability	You have rights to obtain and reuse your Personal Data for your own purposes across different services.
The right to object to processing	You have the right to object to processing for direct marketing and also to processing which is carried out for the purposes of our legitimate interests.
The right to lodge a complaint	You have the right to lodge a complaint about the way we handle or process your Personal Data with your national data protection regulator as outlined in this Notice.
The right to withdraw consent	If you have given your consent to anything we do with your Personal Data, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time (although if you do so, it does not mean that anything we have done with your Personal Data with your consent up to that point is unlawful). This includes your right to withdraw consent to us using your Personal Data for marketing purposes.

Security of your information

We take all appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect the confidentiality and security of your Personal Information. We have implemented an information security program that contains administrative, technical and physical controls that are reasonably designed to safeguard your Personal Information.

 

Links and Third-Party Websites

The Blackwater Valley Opera Festival Website may contain links to other websites that are not owned or controlled by us. We advise you to familiarise yourself with the individual privacy notice and other terms for each linked website prior to submitting your Personal Data. We are not responsible for and do not have control over their terms of use or privacy notices, have not reviewed them and we do not accept any liability with respect to the content of these web sites or how they use, store or secure your Personal Data.

 

Data Retention

We will retain your personal information for the period necessary to fulfil the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law.

 

Subject Access Requests

It is your responsibility to ensure that the personal information you provide to us is accurate, complete and up-to-date. You may request access to the information we hold about you, or request that we update or correct any personal information we hold about you, by setting out your request in writing and sending it to us at [email protected]

The Blackwater Valley Opera Festival will process your request as soon as reasonably practicable, provided we are not otherwise prevented from doing so on legal grounds. If we are unable to meet your request, we will let you know why. For example, it may be necessary for us to deny your request if it would have an unreasonable impact on the privacy or affairs of other individuals, or if it is not reasonable and practicable for us to process your request in the manner you have requested.

 

Notification of Changes

We recommend that you check this Notice every time you visit our Websites or provide us with your Personal Data offline as we may update this Notice from time to time, by posting the amended Notice on our Websites. Any changes will be effective when posted and your continued use of our Websites or not objecting to the use of your Personal Data will indicate your acknowledgement of any changes.

 

Changes and updates to the Privacy Notice

Any changes we may make to our Privacy Notice in the future will be posted on our Websites. If the changes are significant, we will provide a more prominent notice when we are required to do so by applicable law. Please review this Privacy Notice from time to time to stay updated on any changes.

 

Contact Us

If you have any questions, concerns or complaints regarding our compliance with this Notice and the data protection laws, or if you wish to exercise your rights of access, choice, rectification or deletion, we encourage you to first contact us.

In the event that you are not satisfied with our handing of your complaint h, you have the right to lodge a complaint directly with the supervisory authority and the Blackwater Valley Opera Festival’s data protection representative.

 

The details for each of these contacts are:

Supervisory authority contact details:
Blackwater Valley Opera Festival
c/o Linda Scales & Associates,
Castleview House,
Sandymount Green,
Dublin

Office of the Data Protection Commissioner:
Canal House,
Station Road,
Portarlington,
Co. Laois

Festival Policies: Cookie Policy

To make this site work properly, we sometimes place small data files called cookies on your device. Most big websites do this too.

 

What are cookies?

A cookie is a small text file that a website saves on your computer or mobile device when you visit the site. It enables the website to remember your actions and preferences (such as login, language, font size and other display preferences) over a period of time, so you don’t have to keep re-entering them whenever you come back to the site or browse from one page to another.

 

How do we use cookies?

Session Cookie

This session cookie allows us to know you are the same person when you move from one page to the next, for both users who are logged in and also for some users who have not logged-in.

 

Greeting

When you log-in, we store a greeting (usually your name) so that you know you are logged in as the right person when you continue to browse around the website or continue onwards to purchase tickets or items from our shop.

 

Ticket Expiration

When you add tickets or products to your basket, we set a cookie on your machine to ensure that we are able to correctly let you know when your basket will expire, and your tickets will stop being reserved for you.

 

Basket Status

When you add tickets to your basket, we set a cookie that logs that you have items in your basket and helps us to display the correct basket status to you when you then continue to browse around the website.

 

Membership Status

When you log-in, this cookie stores information that helps to show the correct page for your membership in periods of high demand. It expires when you close your web browser.

 

Third-Party Cookies

We use suppliers who also set cookies on behalf of our website to provide certain features on the website and help us to review how our customers usage of the website, details of which we have included below along with links to their respective privacy policies which will detail how these suppliers use data they collect in more detail.

 

Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics to determine how popular parts of our website are, to determine if you have been to the website before, and to securely and anonymously record the value of any purchases you make on our website. Google analytics sets cookies which will stay active for a number of years and identify on your computer that you have visited our website.

These cookies can be identified by their prefix of __u…. You can opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites you visit by installing a browser plugin like this one.

If you just want to find out more information about Google’s privacy policy, then please click here.