Privacy & Cookie Policy

Please read this information carefully, by providing your information to us you acknowledge you have read this policy and understand we will process your information in accordance with its terms.

This privacy and cookie policy sets out how The MAC (Metropolitan Arts Centre) Trading Co Limited (“the MAC”) uses and protects your personal data. The MAC is committed to ensuring that your information is kept safe. Any personal information you provide the MAC will only be used in accordance with this policy. The MAC is the controller and responsible for your personal data.

This policy explains:

• What information we may collect about you;

• How we may use that information;

• In what situations we may disclose your details to third parties;

• Our use of cookies to improve your use of our website; and

• Information about how we keep your personal information secure, how long we maintain it for and your rights to be able to access it.

If you have any queries about this policy, please use the contact information at the bottom of this page to get in touch.

The MAC may change or update this policy occasionally. Any changes will be made available through an update to this document on our website. This policy is effective from January 2018 and was last updated in March 2024.

The MAC Data Promise

We want you to enjoy the communications you receive from the MAC. To make sure you always get the relevant information, here’s our promise to you:

• You’ll exclusively hear about shows, exhibitions, offers, jobs at the MAC and other news.

• We won’t email you more than twice a month.

• When available, you’ll receive our season brochure in the post (twice a year at most).

• We’ll only send you information that we think is relevant to you & your interests.

• We’ll always protect your personal information and never pass on your information to a third party without your consent.

• You can unsubscribe, update or change your preferences at any time.

We promise to use the information we collect about you in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR, 2018), the Data Protection Act (2018) and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR, 2003). We aim to be clear about how we handle your data and to have a legal basis for collecting and using your personal data.

What information may we collect?

You may be required to give us personal information when you buy a ticket, sign up to our mailing list, update your contact preferences, make a donation, join a membership scheme, sign up for an event, visit our offices, apply for a job or volunteer post, book a conference or event or participate in a project.

We may collect the following information:

• Full name

• Contact information including telephone number, postal address and email address

• Demographic information such as date of birth, preferences and interests

• Other information relevant to customer surveys and/or offers

• A record of your purchases and donations

• Communications preferences

• Access requirements (where applicable)

• Allergies and dietary requirements (where applicable)

• Any other information you provide to us by email, letter, telephone, social media, via our website or in person

• CCTV security recordings, and possible photography and filming at performances/events

We have a number of lawful reasons that we can use (or 'process') your personal information. We rely on one or more of the following legal basis:

• Performance of a contract with you: Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.

• Legitimate interests: We may use your personal data where it is necessary to conduct our business and pursue our legitimate interests, for example to prevent fraud and enable us to give you the best and most secure customer experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights (both positive and negative) before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law).

• Legal obligation: We may use your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation that we are subject to. We will identify the relevant legal obligation when we rely on this legal basis.

• Consent: We rely on consent only where we have obtained your active agreement to use your personal data for a specified purpose, for example if you subscribe to an email newsletter.

What do we do with that information?

We require your information to better understand your needs. It allows us to provide MAC customers with a better service and in particular for the following reasons:

• Customer record keeping;

• We will email you with information on new shows, special offers or other information which we think you’ll be interested in, unless you have asked us not to; and

• We may use the information to improve our products or services.

Maintaining your personal information and updating your preferences

We store your personal information indefinitely such that for any subsequent purchases you make we can link them back to a single unique record that we hold for you on our system.

Any objections you make to any processing of your data will be stored against your record on our system so that we can comply with your requests.

You can set and update your personal contact and interest preferences at any time, by visiting your account online or through our Box Office team, in person or over the phone. Every email we send to you will contain an option to unsubscribe, or you can contact us via the details below. In accordance with this Privacy Policy we will always contact you if there is any important change to your booking.

Unless you ask us not to, we will tell you about our future events, ticket offers, our other relevant services (e.g. hospitality, memberships), or opportunities to support our charitable work (from volunteering to fundraising).

If there are aspects of your record that are inaccurate or that you would like to remove, you can usually do this by logging in to your account through our website. Alternatively, please use the contact details at the end of this policy to get in touch with our Box Office Manager.

When will you stop hearing from us?

If you have not booked a ticket on themaclive.com in 5 years and have not engaged with attempts from the MAC to re-engage, then we will remove your information from our mailing list. You are welcome to reconnect with us at any time.

Third parties

There are certain circumstances under which we may disclose your personal information to third parties. These are as follows:

• To our own service providers who process data on our behalf and on our instructions (for example our ticketing system software provider).

• Where we are under a duty to disclose your personal information in order to comply with any legal obligation (for example to government bodies and law enforcement agencies).

• To specific named visiting companies whose performances you have attended. In these cases, we will always ask for your explicit consent before doing so.

• If we run an event in partnership with another third-party organisation, some of your details may be shared in order to help us run the event.

We may sometimes share anonymised data with third-party organisations to produce reports about their events at the MAC or funding applications. The anonymised data includes (but is not limited to): number of tickets booked, ticket types, booking behaviour (how far in advance were the tickets booked), number of first-time bookers, full postcodes [E&Co.1] (for bookers based in Northern Ireland only), countries.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

Sensitive and personal information

Data Protection law recognises that certain categories of personal information are more sensitive such as health information, ethnicity, religious beliefs and political opinions. We do not usually collect this type of information about our visitors unless there is a clear reason for doing so. As an example, we collect health information from those who have given consent about visitors who may require access assistance with seating.

We may ask for other information specific to a job or volunteering role you are applying for.

From time to time we might ask visitors to take part in surveys to assess many aspects, including ethnicity. This is optional, rather than mandatory and you always have the right to decline providing us with this information.

Your debit and credit card information

If you use your credit or debit card to purchase from us or to make a donation, we will ensure that this is carried out securely and in accordance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS).

We optionally allow you to store your card details for use in a future transaction. This is carried out in compliance with PCI-DSS and in a way where none of our staff members are able to see your full card number. We never store your 3 or 4 digit security code.

Information about your interactions with us

Through our website, we collect anonymised information about how you interact with our content and ads. When we send you a mailing (email or post) we store a record of this, and in the case of emails, we keep a record of which ones you have opened - and which ones you have clicked on.

Cookies

Themaclive.com uses cookies to enhance user experience when they visit our website. A cookie is a small piece of information that is placed on your computer when you visit certain websites. When we refer to “cookies” we include other technologies with similar purposes.

You can choose to accept or decline cookies. You can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set, visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.

Find out how to manage cookies on popular browsers:

Google Chrome

Microsoft Edge

Mozilla Firefox

Microsoft Internet Explorer

Opera

Apple Safari

To find information relating to other browsers, visit the browser developer's website.

To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites, visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage...

We use the following cookies:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly necessary cookies are cookies that are required for operation of our website.

Cookie Name Description Duration

OptanonAlertBoxClosed This cookie is set by websites using certain versions of the cookie law compliance solution from OneTrust. It is set after visitors have seen a cookie information notice and in some cases only when they actively close the notice down. It enables the website not to show the message more than once to a user. The cookie has a one year lifespan and contains no personal information. 364 Days

CraftSessionId This cookie name is associated with the Craft web content management system, where is functions as an anonymous session identifier. Session Cookie

CRAFT_CSRF_TOKEN This cookie is used by Cloudflare to identify trusted web traffic. Session Cookie

_dc_gtm_UA-xxxxxxxx This cookie is associated with sites using Google Tag Manager to load other scripts and code into a page. Where it is used it may be regarded as Strictly Necessary as without it, other scripts may not function correctly. The end of the name is a unique number which is also an identifier for an associated Google Analytics account. Session Cookie

__cf_bm The __cf_bm cookie is a cookie necessary to support Cloudflare Bot Management, currently in private beta. As part of our bot management service, this cookie helps manage incoming traffic that matches criteria associated with bots.

This is a CloudFoundry cookie Session Cookie

OptanonConsent This cookie is set by the cookie compliance solution from OneTrust. It stores information about the categories of cookies the site uses and whether visitors have given or withdrawn consent for the use of each category. This enables site owners to prevent cookies in each category from being set in the users browser, when consent is not given. The cookie has a normal lifespan of one year, so that returning visitors to the site will have their preferences remembered. It contains no information that can identify the site visitor. 364 Days

Performance Cookies

Performance cookies allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it.

Cookie Name Description Duration

_ga This cookie name is associated with Google Universal Analytics - which is a significant update to Google's more commonly used analytics service. This cookie is used to distinguish unique users by assigning a randomly generated number as a client identifier. It is included in each page request in a site and used to calculate visitor, session and campaign data for the sites analytics reports. By default it is set to expire after 2 years, although this is customisable by website owners._ga 730 Days

_gclxxxx Google conversion tracking cookie 90 Days

_gid This cookie name is associated with Google Universal Analytics. This appears to be a new cookie and as of Spring 2017 no information is available from Google. It appears to store and update a unique value for each page visited._gid 1 Day

_ga_VGJ8JYCMEJ _ga 729 Days

_gat This cookie name is associated with Google Universal Analytics, according to documentation it is used to throttle the request rate - limiting the collection of data on high traffic sites. It expires after 10 minutes._ga Session Cookie

Functional Cookies

Functional cookies are used to recognise you when you return to our website.

Cookie Name Description Duration

__stripe_sid Stripe is used to making credit card payments. Stripe uses a cookie to remember who you are and to enable the website to process payments without storing any credit card information on its own servers. Session Cookie

__stripe_mid Stripe is used to making credit card payments. Stripe uses a cookie to remember who you are and to enable the website to process payments without storing any credit card information on its own servers. 364 Days

SessionId Used to distinguish users. Session Cookie

QueueNumber Used to record the user's place when queuing for tickets. Session Cookie

CookieDetection Used to identify whether cookies can be set. Session Cookie

Targeting Cookies

Cookie Name Description Duration

_fbp Used by Facebook to deliver a series of advertisement products such as real time bidding from third party advertisers 90 Days

VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE This cookie is used as a unique identifier to track viewing of videos 180 Days

CONSENT YouTube is a Google owned platform for hosting and sharing videos. YouTube collects user data through videos embedded in websites, which is aggregated with profile data from other Google services in order to display targeted advertising to web visitors across a broad range of their own and other websites. 5995 Days

YSC YouTube is a Google owned platform for hosting and sharing videos. YouTube collects user data through videos embedded in websites, which is aggregated with profile data from other Google services in order to display targeted advertising to web visitors across a broad range of their own and other websites. Session Cookie

Links to other websites

Occasionally, themaclive.com may contain links to other websites of interest. Once you have left themaclive.com, please note that the MAC does not have any control over that external website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites as they are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

Other processing activities

In addition to marketing communications, we also process personal information in the following ways that are within our legitimate organisational interests:

• We may analyse information we hold about you to ensure that the content and timing of communications that we send you are as relevant to you as possible.

• We may analyse information we hold about you in order to identify and prevent fraud.

In all of the above cases, we will always keep your rights and interests at the forefront to ensure they are not overridden by your own interests or fundamental rights and freedoms. You have the right to object to any of this processing at any time. If you wish to do this, please use the contact details at the end of this policy. Please bear in mind that if you object this may affect our ability to carry out the tasks above that enhance the service we provide you.

Security of your personal information

We will put in place appropriate safeguards (both in terms of our procedures and the technology we use) to keep your personal information as secure as possible and to prevent your personal data from being lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. We will ensure that any third parties we use for processing your personal information only process your data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We will not transfer, process or store your data anywhere that is outside of the European Economic Area.

Your Right to Object

You can ask us at any time to stop processing of your personal information if it is for direct marketing purposes at any time. You can do this by contacting the box office team on the phone 02890 235053, by email [email protected] or if you have an online account you can login on our website and update your contact preferences. We will never ignore a request.

You have rights including the following:

• to be informed of the ways in which we use your information, as we seek to do in this policy

• to request us to stop processing your personal data for marketing purposes

• you can request a copy of the personal information we hold about you

• you can request that inaccuracies are corrected

• you can withdraw any consent to direct marketing (please see the section “Why do we collect this information, and how do we use it?” above to see when we are relying on your consent)

• the right to object to our using your information on the basis of our legitimate interests (refer to the section headed “Why do we collect this information, and how do we use it?” above to see when we are relying on our legitimate interests) (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

• in certain circumstances you can request that we limit or cease processing or erase your personal information

• you can lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office

Please note that we may need to retain certain information for our own record-keeping and research purposes. We may also need to send you customer service-related communications.

Contact details

Please get in touch with us if you have any questions about our Privacy and Cookie policy, and in particular, if you would like to speak to someone further on the way we process information for our legitimate organisational interests.

If you have questions in relation to this policy, please contact:

Julie Gallagher

Box Office Manager

[email protected]

The MAC

10 Exchange Street West

Belfast

BT1 2NJ