Privacy Policy & Cookies

Cambridge Literary Festival is committed to ensuring the privacy of its customers. This Privacy Policy explains how when and why we collect personal information about people who visit our website, how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others and how we keep it secure. It may change occasionally so please check this statement from time to time. By using our website, you are agreeing to be bound by this policy.

Who we are

We are Cambridge Literary Festival, a charity registered in England and Wales no 1153944. Our registered address is Birketts Solicitors, 22 Station Road, Cambridge CB1 2JD.

How we collect information from you

We collect personal information from you through you creating an account with us and buying tickets to Festival events, subscription to our newsletter(s) or membership schemes, donations, competition entry and any other forms that you may complete, as well as any emails that you send us. Cambridge Literary Festival is the sole owner of the information collected on this site. We will not sell, share or rent this information to others in ways different from what is disclosed in this statement. The personal information we collect might include your name, address, email address, IP address, and information regarding what pages are accessed and when. If you purchase a product from us your card information is not held by us, it is collected by our third-party payment processors, who specialise in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions. Cambridge Literary Festival does not store any credit card or banking details on our website.

What are cookies and how do we use them?

Like many other websites, the Cambridge Literary Festival website uses cookies.

‘Cookies’ are small pieces of information sent by an organisation to your computer and stored on your hard drive to allow that website to recognise you when you visit. They collect statistical data about your browsing actions and patterns and do not identify you as an individual. This helps us to improve our website and deliver a better more personalised service.

The user has the choice to accept or reject cookies by changing settings on their browser. Cookies are used to deliver personalised content to users by storing the user’s preferences. Sensitive information like passwords and credit card details are not stored on cookies placed on the user’s system by the Cambridge Literary Festival website. For more information about cookies visit www.allaboutcookies.com

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites. If you follow a link to any other website from www.cambridgeliteraryfestival.com, please be aware that the third-party websites and services are not governed by this Privacy Policy. Please check third-party website policies before submitting personal data or using their services.

What we do with your personal information

We use personal information that you give us to answer your enquiries and provide you with information you have requested. We also use this information to better understand website usage and audience attendance so we know what areas of our website and what activities and events customers prefer. Website data is stored in log files and is used for aggregated and statistical reporting but cannot be attributed to you as an individual.

We may use your personal information to keep you informed about our events and activities and may contact you from time to time about these. If you have given us permission to do so, we may use your information to email you ebulletins, programme updates and alerts.

We also hold information about you so that we can respect your preferences for being contacted by us.

We may also contact you to send you survey and feedback requests to help us improve our services to you and where we have a legitimate interest to do so – for instance, if you have attended the Festival and we are seeking your views about your visit.

We review our retention periods for personal information on a regular basis. We are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory obligations. We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity, or as long as is set out in any relevant contract you hold with us.

Legal basis for using your information

In some cases, we will only use your personal information where we have your consent (for example, signing up to our email bulletins) or because we need to use it to fulfil our contract with you (for example, you have booked tickets with us). We may also need to collect and process your personal data for a legal obligation (for example, when investigating criminal activity).

The Festival may also process your data when it is in our legitimate interests to do so, and when these interests do not override your rights. This means your personal data may be used to help us continue to run Cambridge Literary Festival. For instance, we may provide you with information about our launch dates, programme content and other events we may put on, inform you about our membership schemes, advance booking options or fundraising activities.

We will disclose personally identifiable information when required by the law or in the good-faith belief that such an action is necessary to:

Conform to the edicts of the law or comply with a legal process served on Cambridge Literary Festival
Protect or defend the rights or property of Cambridge Literary Festival network of sites, or visitors to the Cambridge Literary Festival website.
Identify persons who may be violating the law, the legal notice or the rights of third parties.
Co-operate with the investigations of purported unlawful activities

Legitimate interests

We use several legal bases for processing your personal information including ‘legitimate interest’. Legitimate interest means we may process your information if we have a genuine and legitimate reason and it is not harming your rights and interests. It applies to us using your data in a in a way you would reasonably expect and that has a minimal privacy impact.

For instance, if you have recently booked a ticket to the Festival we may use your data to send you useful information relating to your visit; if you attended the Festival last year, we may send you a copy of the programme this year; if we have a long-standing and on-going relationship with you we may send you information about new event or fundraising activities. Before we use your personal data in this way, we will balance our legitimate interests against your rights and freedoms.

We may inform you about future Book Festival events, changes to the Festival programme and fundraising activities – all of which help to support and develop the Edinburgh International Book Festival and allow us to continue to programme events and put on the Festival in its current form. You have the right to object to this at any time.

Security

Cambridge Literary Festival takes reasonable steps to ensure the security of data transmissions from the user’s PC to our servers and stored information. Where sensitive information like credit card details or financial information is transmitted, it is done so using SSL encryption. Access to stored information is password protected and every reasonable attempt will be made to ensure that these passwords are only known to Cambridge Literary Festival personnel and trusted third parties (website developers and the Internet Service Provider) who are authorised by us.

Your rights

You have the right to:

be informed about how we use your personal information
require us to correct any inaccuracies in your information

withdraw your consent at any time (if you have given consent)
obtain and reuse your personal data for your own purpose
not to be subject to a decision based on automated processing (automated decision-making and profiling)
be forgotten and have your personal data erased (in certain circumstances). You can make this request verbally or in writing and we will respond within one month
object to our processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground

object to our processing of your personal information for marketing and communication purposes

Updating your personal information and preferences

There are several ways you can update your details:

Click unsubscribe in any email communication that we send you
Log into your Festival website account (if you have an account) and visit the ‘My Account’ area. You may update your name, contact details, password and change your preferences at any time

Retaining your information

We will only keep your personal data for as long as is reasonable and necessary. Some retention periods will be determined by legal or professional guidelines and others by our internal policies. At the end of a retention period we will review and delete data as required.

Use of photographs

Each year we commission a photographer to take images of people at the Festival. Some of the resulting images are used on this website and in our printed materials to promote the Festival, its services and activities. We try to give reasonable notice to the subjects of the photographs (or a parent/carer) to obtain permission for the image/s to be used by us to promote the Festival at the time the photograph is taken. Should you believe that an image should not be used for any valid reason please contact us and we will remove it.

For more information please contact us:

hello@cambridgeliteraryfestival.com

Further information

If you wish to find out more about how we use and process our data or lodge a complaint about how your data has been used please contact admin@cambridgeliteraryfestival.com. Thank you.