PRIVACY POLICY

The following statement explains Serendipity Institute for Black Arts and Heritage’s policy regarding the personal information you may give to us when using our website (www.serendipity-uk.com).  Our aim is to respect your privacy in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation 2016, and to meet current internet best practice.

1. Statement of Intent

Serendipity respect the right to privacy online and are committed to protecting any information shared with us.

Serendipity will never sell, distribute or intentionally make personal information public and have implemented appropriate technical and organisational security measures to protect data share with us from loss and preserve its security and confidentiality.  

Serendipity believes in being transparent about the data we collect and how it will be handled and to providing relevant information and control at the point of collection so that you can make informed decisions about what personal data you choose to share with us.

• Our Legal Basis for Processing

Serendipity collect and process information about you only where we have legal bases for doing so.  

This legal basis will depend on the individual services you use and how you use them.  Additional information is provided below but in general terms we will only collect and use your information where:

• It is necessary for us to provide you with a service, including for support or to protect the safety and security of the services itself.  For example, you will be asked to submit personal information about yourself (for example, name and e-mail address etc.) in order to receive or use services on our website or to enable Serendipity to contact you.  Such services also include feedback forms, complaint forms, consultation questionnaires, and reviews.
• It satisfies a legitimate interest which is not overridden by your data protection interests.  Such as for research and development and to improve the user experience of our website.
• You have given us consent to do so for a specific purpose.
• We need to process your data to comply with a legal obligation.
• In cases where you have consented to our use of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to change your mind at any time.  Where we are using your information because we have a legitimate interest to do so, you have the right to object to that use.  However, this may mean you will no longer able to access our services.

• Third Party Data Processors

Like many organisations, Serendipity rely on a number of third-party providers to support our website’s operations, for example in areas such as online file storage and email delivery.  Serendipity may also hire third parties to operate, maintain or improve our website and other digital services.  Some of these service providers will by necessity have access to or be directly involved in processing or storing a subset of the personal information you share with us.

All our third-party data processors have been carefully chosen as service suppliers who also practice responsible data handling and appropriate protections to ensure the security of the data we store or process with them and have clear policies for how they treat that data.  But if in doubt you should review their individual Privacy Policies:

• Google (Website analytics): https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245?hl=en
• HubSpot (Website analytics): https://legal.hubspot.com/privacy-policy
• Maichimp (Email marketing): https://mailchimp.com/legal/privacy/
• Axiell Collections (Digital Archive): https://www.axiell.com/uk/privacy-policy/

Before using or sharing your information with third parties in ways not described here or previously authorised by you, we will provide you with notice and an opportunity to control the further use or disclosure of your personal information.

• General Browsing

Our website is hosted in the UK.  When you visit our website or access one of the files stored on our web server information about this request will be automatically stored in our log files to provide usage statistics, enable security features and aid technical troubleshooting.  This is on the legal basis of legitimate commercial interests.  In these cases, your IP address at the time acts as a unique identifier and is stored along with information about your operating system, browser version and the pages/files you access.  These logs are retained on the server for up to 30 days, after which they are automatically deleted.  Our website host will also record a similar set of data for the purposes of data management and security.  This data is retained by them for up to 3 months.

Serendipity use Google Analytics to help understand how our website is being discovered and interacted with and we use this information to help improve the experience for our visitors and make decisions about future development.  Google Analytics presents us with aggregate information about the geographic location, device types and operating systems used by our website visitors, but not in a way that personally identifies you.  Additionally, Google will record your computer’s IP address and set a number of temporary cookies in your browser to help distinguish you as an individual visitor as you move around our site.  Any user-level data that is associated with Analytics’ cookies are retained for up to 26 months from your last activity on our site, after which it is automatically deleted from Analytics’ servers.

To opt out of Google Analytics cookies, please go to: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

Our website and emails contain a number of links to third party sites. It is important to be aware that these external sites are governed by their own privacy policies and we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies.  The inclusion of a link to an external source should not be understood to be an endorsement of that website, its owners or their products/services.  Always check the individual privacy policies of these external sites before you submit any personal data through them.

• Cookies

Cookies are temporary files stored in your web browser by a website to help track usage and enable services that rely on a persistent identity.  You can control which cookies you accept and remove them at any time by adjusting your browser settings, but it is important to be aware that some cookies are essential and our website may not function as expected without them.

Essential cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our websites and to use some of its features.  But you can still block or delete them by changing your browser preferences.

Non-essential cookies are used to enhance the performance and functionality of our website.  They are non-essential but without them certain functionality may become unavailable.  These include:

• YSC (YouTube) – used to support playback of embedded YouTube videos.  Expires at the end of your session.
• VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE (YouTube) – used to support playback of embedded YouTube videos. Expires after 8 months.
• PREF (YouTube) – used to support playback of embedded YouTube videos.  Expires after 8 months.

Analytics and customisation cookies collect information to help us understand how our website is being used or customise it in order to enhance your experience.  These include:

• _ga (Google Analytics) – used to distinguish between users.  Expires after 2 years.
• _gat (Google Analytics) – used to distinguish between users.  Expires after 24 hours.
• _gid (Google Analytics) – used to throttle the request rate.  Expires after 1 minute.
• loc, mus, ssc, uid, uvc (AddThis) – set by the service we use to provide social sharing to record usage stats, including the geographic location of sharers.  Expire after 1 month.
• __hstc (HubSpot) – records a timestamp of a user’s first visit, last visit, and total number of sessions. Expires after 13 months.
• hubspotutk (HubSpot) – used to keep track of a visitor’s identity and passed to HubSpot on form submission to deduplicate contacts.  Expires after 13 months.
• __hssc (HubSpot) – keeps track of sessions and used to determine if HubSpot should increment the session number and timestamps in the __hstc cookie.  Expires after 30 minutes.
• __hssrc (HubSpot) – whenever HubSpot changes the session cookie, this cookie is also set to determine if the visitor has restarted their browser.  Expires at end of session.

Advertising cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you and your interests.

• Email Marketing

Serendipity uses HubSpot and Mailchimp for our email marketing.  When you subscribe to our newsletter or download resources, the email address and name you submit will be held securely by them and the information also made accessible to us.  HubSpot and Mailchimp’s servers are based in the US, so your information may be transferred to, stored, or processed in the US.  Both HubSpot and Mailchimp participate in and has certified its compliance with the EU- US Privacy Shield Framework, which certifies that is has adequate safeguards in place.  As respected email marketing providers HubSpot and Mailchimp will not share your information with any unauthorised third parties or contact you directly at any time.

By default, we will retain your data in HubSpot and Mailchimp for as long as you choose to stay subscribed or such time as we consider your account to be inactive (you are no longer opening or engaging with our emails).  You can update your details or opt-out of our emails at any time using the ‘Unsubscribe’ or ‘Email Preferences’ links found at the bottom of every email we send via Mailchimp.  If you unsubscribe Mailchimp will retain your email address for the purposes of a suppression list to ensure that no further marketing messages can be sent unless you actively choose to opt-in again.

In addition to the information, you supply at sign-up will also capture data about your interactions with our emails and website, such as which links you click within an email which pages you go on to visit on our website.  It does this using a combination of tracking pixels and cookies.  You can learn more about those in the Cookies section of this privacy policy.  We use this information to help improve our product and provide more personalised messaging.

Serendipity may also combine the information you provide us at sign-up with data from other sources, such as our website, to help us improve the relevance of the emails we send you.  For example, if you are also a Connect member we will record that information in your profile to ensure that the content of our emails reflects that.

• Contacting us by Email

When you send us an email, either to one of the addresses displayed on our website or a member of the Serendipity team, we will collect your email address and any other information you provide within your email.

Gmail are our email service provider.  Any emails you send us will be stored on their servers and your email and any associated personal data may be transferred outside of the European Economic Area to servers located in the USA.  You can learn more here: https://policies.google.com/privacy/frameworks?hl=en-US

The information you provide will only be processed in relation to the purpose of your correspondence with us.  We have no fixed retention period for email correspondence, but we are committed to only storing your data for no longer than is necessary to serve our legitimate interests of record keeping or to perform a contract we have entered into with you.  For instance, communications about products, events and delivery.

• Users under 18 years of age

Our website and services are specifically intended for users under 18 years of age and we will not knowingly collect or use the personal data of children.  If you are under the age of 18 please do not provide any personal data even if prompted to do so.  If wishing to use Website services, please obtain your parent/guardian’s permission and support.  Users without this consent are not allowed to provide us with personal information.

• Personal Data Breaches

A breach is considered any loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure of, or access to, personal data.  We are committed to disclosing any personal data breaches that might adversely affect your rights and freedoms without undue delay so that you can take appropriate action.  Any notifiable breaches will also be reported to the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office within 3 days.  This includes breaches affecting the third-party services identified in this privacy policy, where personal data is being held on our behalf.

1. Serendipity Brand

Copying the Serendipity logo for use on another website is not permitted without asking specific permission beforehand.  Ordinarily, consent will be provided if that logo is to be used as a link to the home page of our website at www.serendipity-uk.com – in which case you must include an Alt Tag with the image which says, “Serendipity Institute for Black Arts and Heritage, www.serendipity-uk.com”.

You do not need to ask permission to link directly to the home page of our site at www.serendipity-uk.com.  Although Serendipity always appreciates notification of where links to our website are listed.

1. Virus protection

Serendipity make every effort to check and test materials held on our website at all stages of production.  It is always wise for you to run an anti-virus program on all material downloaded from the Internet.  We cannot accept any responsibility for any loss, disruption or damage to your data or your computer system which may occur whilst using material derived from this website.

1. Questions and Access Requests

The General Data Protection Regulation (2018) gives you the right to know what person data we hold, to have it updated if it is inaccurate or removed entirely if you no longer consent to our use of it.  Serendipity will endeavour to respond to any such requests within one month confirming receipt and outlining what follow-up actions will be taken and when.

By using our website, you consent to the use of your information in the way set out above.  If we decide to change our privacy policy we will post changes on this page so that you are kept informed. 

We also welcome questions about our Privacy Policy and these or any access requests should be directed to our Data Protection Officer: info@serendipity-uk.com, Serendipity Institute for Black Arts and Heritage, 21 Bowling Green Street, Leicester, LE1 6AS, UK