Sevenoaks Literary Festival (“the Festival”) organises and promotes a fortnight-long literary festival held each year within Sevenoaks during late September/early October. The format of the Festival is comprised of a series of presentations from published authors (including novelists, poets, biographers and academics). These events, which usually include a literary tea and a literary lunch each year, are normally held during the early evening but also at other times of the day at a variety of venues within Sevenoaks. In addition, an annual and free schools’ event is organised for students from local state primary schools. This event is sponsored by Sevenoaks Town Council and subsidised by the Festival. It is organised under the auspices of Sevenoaks Primary School.
The Festival is run by a Committee of volunteers. It has no paid employees. The tasks of the Committee involve the design of the programme, making contact with prospective speakers, hosting speakers, producing publicity materials (hard and soft copy), staffing the Festival’s events and providing the hospitality for the annual literary tea. Most of this work takes place in a series of monthly meetings running up to the Festival.
The Committee works closely with Sevenoaks Bookshop www.sevenoaksbookshop.co.uk in designing the programme, contacting speakers and providing books for sale at the various events during the Festival.
In the context of data protection the Festival is a data controller within the UK.
The personal information referred to in this policy may include name, contact details, and such other information as may be necessary for pursuing the legitimate interests of the Festival in support of its activities.
The Festival collects and holds personal information about:
1. The “Friends” of the Festival, their addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses
This information is used to inform the Friends about the emergent and final programme of the Festival, to inform them by email of the date when tickets go on sale, to process ticket orders and, via the Festival’s website, to provide reports of the Festival. The Friends personal data are recorded in a file held by MailChimp, our third-party email client. The log-in details of this file, its user name and its password are known only to two members of the organising committee. All email communications with Friends via MailChimp incorporate an opt-out option to enable any Friend to have their details removed from the file.
2. Members of the Committee, their addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses
This data is kept on an annually updated database circulated around but not beyond the members of the Committee to facilitate ease of communication between them in the organisation of the Festival. No information about the Committee is included on the Festival’s website other than in the form of an occasional photograph of their involvement in the Festival’s events.
3. Speakers and other participants in the Festival
This data includes contact details (name, address, telephone, email address) and, on occasion, financial details to enable payment of presenters’ fees and expenses. Contact with speakers is usually – but not always – made via their agents but, in addition, a personal telephone contact is held in order to cope with last-minute problems in attendance or arrival at the Festival.
Photographs of the participants taken during their appearance at the Festival are held in a password-protected file held by the Festival’s photographer and publicity officer. Permission to take photographs is always sought before any are made and a selection of photographs is sent to participants after their appearance at the Festival along with an invitation to them to use any that may be useful to them.
4. Those responsible for managing the venues used by the Festival
This data includes the institutional addresses and email addresses and personal telephone numbers of those responsible for managing the venues.
5. Contact details of the various sponsors of the Festival
6. Others who support the Festival in the provision of services.
This information is used to arrange and confirm services. The data may be retained for follow-up contact purposes.
7. Contact details of publishers and literary agents associated with speakers at the Festival.
This data is collected by direct contact and via contact with the Festival box office. The data are held securely within the Festival’s database and in the secure databases held by the Festival’s third-party box office agent TicketSource and email client MailChimp.
With the necessary exception of TicketSource and MailChimp, these data are not shared with any third parties other than via the Festival’s own use of names and photographs of presenters in its publicity materials.
The privacy policy of MailChimp may be accessed here.
The privacy policy of TicketSource may be accessed here.
The Festival may retain historical archives including, but not limited to, records of meetings and the names of presenters and the titles of their presentations. These data may remain on the Festival’s website where they may be used for information and research by the Festival and by members of the public as well as for providing summaries and accounts of the Festival for inclusion on the website and in communications with Friends as well as on the Festival’s Facebook page and Twitter feed.
From time to time the Festival may use data in aggregate form to monitor attendance at its various events and over recent years. This information cannot be linked to individual users.
Nothing in the foregoing prevents members of the Committee, Friends or presenters from sharing their personal contact details and information about the Festival with each other.
The Festival’s website does incorporate Cookies but these are not used for processing data.
You have the right to:
1. apply to the Festival via the dedicated email address [info@sevlitfest.com] or by personal contact with any member of the Committee to verify the information held by the Club about you. The name and contact details of a contact person is included on the Festival’s annual brochure containing details of the programme;
2. ask that Sevenoaks Literary Festival corrects any personal data if they are found to be inaccurate or out of date;
3. ask that your personal data are erased where they are no longer necessary for Sevenoaks Literary Festival to retain them;
4. lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioners Office.
This Privacy Policy may be updated from time to time to reflect changes in the way the Festival operates.