Privacy and Data Protection

This web site is one of several sites owned and controlled by Manchester City Council.

Manchester City Council’s City Galleries service

This privacy notice explains what personal information is collected, what it is used for and who it is provided to. The notice also describes why the Council requires your data, and the legal basis on which it does this. This privacy notice relates to the Council’s City Galleries service. It provides additional information that specifically relates to this particular service, and should be read together with our general privacy notice, which provides more detail on the questions below. Read Manchester City Council’s general privacy notice here.

What kinds of personal information does this service use?

We record some basic details about our visitors, supporters, lenders and partners.

General visitors to the gallery will only be asked for this information as part of surveys which we use to improve our visitor experience. You have no obligation to provide us with any details and in most cases, surveys are anonymous.

We hold more detailed information on Friends and Patrons, donors, Business Partners, lenders and project partners. This includes contact information, personal/ business interests, payment details, and history of relationship with the gallery. We also collect, for research purposes, some more sensitive information (known as special category personal information). This is anonymised but may include:

  • ethnic origin
  • politics
  • religion
  • genetics
  • health
  • sex life
  • sexual orientation

If you visit the Museum and Art Gallery we may also capture CCTV images of you. We may also collect photographs if you attend events at the Gallery organised by us or a third party for archive and publicity purposes.

What is your personal information is used for?

The Gallery uses your personal information in order to:
Provide the services you have subscribed to – for example, to send you our newsletter or event invitations.
Identify you when you contact us and when we contact you (this is explained in further detail below).
For statistical analysis about who visits and uses our services so we can better understand our audiences.
For monitoring and improving our services.

What is the lawful basis we are relying on to use personal information?

We only use your personal information where it is necessary to perform our public tasks by providing and maintaining city galleries and museums, because it is in the wider public interest to do so (Art 6(1)(e) of the General Data Protection Regulation ‘GDPR’).

From time to time, we send out information to gallery visitors about upcoming events. We will only contact you with promotional or marketing information if we have your explicit consent to do so (Art 6(1)(a) of the GDPR)

However there may be circumstances where we are required to use your information by law (Art 6(1)(c) of the GDPR), or to protect someone in an emergency (Art 6(1)(d) of the GDPR).
Where you have provided us with any special category information, we will only use or share this information if you have given explicit consent to do so (Art 9(2)(a) of the GDPR).

Who we will share your personal data with:

Only staff of Manchester City Galleries and our partner museums (Manchester Museum and The Whitworth) have secure access to your personal information. In some circumstances your personal details may also be disclosed to other employees of Manchester City Council. This can happen when other departments are required to help us provide the services you have requested or when it is necessary to answer an issue you have raised that is beyond our expertise.

We will not share your information with organisations other than our partner museums (see above), or specialist transport companies (in the case of lenders) without your consent. Anonymised information on our audiences will be shared with audience agencies, software providers used to manage our services, researchers and funders. There may be certain circumstances where we would share without consent such as where we are required to do so by law, to safeguard public, safety, and in risk of harm or emergency situations. Where this occurs only the minimum information for the purpose will be shared.

We use MailChimp as our marketing automation platform. When subscribing to our newsletter, you acknowledge that the information you provide will be transferred to MailChimp for processing in accordance with their Privacy Policy and Terms.

There may be certain circumstances where we would share personal information about you without your consent. For example, where we are required to do so by law (Art 6(1)(c) of the GDPR), and in emergency situations (Art 6(1)(d) of the GDPR).

Automated decision making / Profiling:

Not applicable

How long will you keep my personal information for?

Friends, Patrons and donor information is stored on our customer management system called Donorfy. Lapsed Friends and Patrons are removed from our system after three years of inactivity.
Lender information is stored on our collections management system, KE EmU in perpetuity for archive purposes.
Both systems have restricted access.

What rights do you have in relation to your personal information?

To read about what rights you have regarding the personal information used for this service, please click here.

How to contact us

If you have any questions or concerns about how the Council uses your personal information, please contact the Council’s Data Protection Officer.

Michael Seal
Data Protection Officer
Manchester City Council
PO Box 532
Town Hall
Manchester M60 2LA

[email protected]

You have the right to have any personal information amended or removed at any time, providing there are no outstanding charges on a membership account.

If you have signed up to Manchester Art Gallery’s e-newsletter, we will use the information you provide on the signup form to be in touch with you and to provide updates and marketing and to make you aware of fundraising campaigns.

You can change your mind at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in the footer of any email you receive from us, or by contacting us at [email protected].

Complaints or queries

If you have any concerns about the way the Council processes your personal information, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office. The contact details are found here:

The Information Commissioner
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
WILMSLOW
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Email: [email protected]

Statistical data

Use of cookies

Like many websites, manchesterartgallery.org uses cookies to record data. A cookie is a small piece of data that is sent from our web server to your browser. It is stored on your device, for example, computer or mobile phone. A cookie cannot read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other websites. It will not damage your system and cannot be used to identify you personally.

Cookies can make websites easier to use by storing information about your preferences on a particular website. The information may remain on your computer after the Internet session finishes and you leave the website but you can delete them using some browsers, manually or using system utilities. Most internet browsers are pre-set to accept cookies.

If you wish to restrict or block the cookies which are set by Manchester Art Gallery’s website, or any other website, you can do this through your browser settings. The help function within your browser should tell you how.

Please be aware that restricting cookies may impact on the functionality of the manchestergalleries.org website.

Cookies we use

We use Google Analytics to collect information about how our visitors find, use and navigate our website. This information helps us to make sure that the website is meeting its users’ needs and to understand how we could improve the experience. It collects information such as the number of visitors to the site, which pages they visited and how they came to the site. This information is anonymous and cannot be used to identify you personally.

Manchester Art Gallery’s website makes use of content embedded from third party websites such as Vimeo, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Flickr. During your visits to our website you may be delivered cookies by these third-party websites. We don’t control the dissemination of these cookies and if you are concerned, you should check these third-party websites for more information.

Links to non City Council external sites

manchesterartgallery.org contains links to other external non city council sites.

Manchester City Council is not responsible for the accessibility or content of non City Council owned sites.

Changes to this privacy policy

If this privacy policy changes in any way, we will place an updated version on this page. Regularly reviewing this page ensures you are always aware of what information we collect.

Requests to access data collected by this web site may also be made to the Information Compliance Officer. If you remain dissatisfied after raising an issue about this policy and / or a request to access personal information collected from you on this site, you may also contact:

The Information Commissioner
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
WILMSLOW
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Email: [email protected]