Privacy Policy

This policy applies to everyone whose personal data we handle, including people who register for or attend Festival events, visit our website, take part in our activations, respond to our surveys and evaluations, or contact us.

Information you give us when you register or get in touch:

• your name;
• your contact details, such as email address and phone number;
• your age, or confirmation that you are old enough to register, and a parent or guardian's details where the registrant is under 18;
• accessibility requirements you choose to share so that we can support your participation;
• health or wellbeing information you choose to share where an event asks for it, so that facilitators can include you safely;
• anything else you choose to tell us in a message or a form.

Payment information:

when you pay a fee, your payment is handled by a third party payment gateway. We receive confirmation that a payment succeeded, along with basic transaction references. We do not collect or store your full card or bank account details.

Feedback and evaluation information:

responses to surveys, feedback forms, and wellbeing measures that we use to understand and improve the Festival and to build knowledge in the field. This is dealt with in more detail in Section 6.

Photographs, film, and recordings:

images and recordings made at events, in which you may appear. How we use these is set out in Section 7.

Information collected automatically when you use our website:

basic technical information such as your device type, browser, and general usage, collected through cookies and similar tools. See Section 9.

We use your personal data to:

• process your registration and confirm your place;
• communicate with you about an event you have registered for, including changes and safety information;
• run events safely and meet accessibility and support needs;
• handle payments, keep financial records, and resolve payment queries;
• understand, evaluate, improve the Festival, and report on it;
• respond to your questions, requests, and complaints;
• meet our legal and regulatory obligations.

We rely mainly on your consent, which you give when you register or when you choose to share information with us. We also process data where we need to in order to meet a legal obligation or to protect someone's safety. You can withdraw your consent at any time, as explained in Section 10. Withdrawing consent does not affect anything we did lawfully before you withdrew it, and in some cases it may mean we can no longer provide a place or a service.

We will not use your data for a new purpose that is unrelated to the ones above without telling you and, where required, asking for your consent.

Any health, wellbeing, or accessibility information you share with us is treated with particular care.

• We collect it only where you choose to give it, or where an event genuinely needs it to include you safely.
• We use it only for the purpose for which you gave it, such as arranging support or adapting an activity.
• We limit who can see it to the people who need it to arrange that support.
• We do not use it to make decisions about you beyond your participation, and we do not pass it to sponsors or partners.

If you tell us something that leads us to believe there is a serious risk to your safety or to someone else's, we may share what is necessary with an appropriate service or professional in order to help. Where we do this, we act in your interests and we do not direct you towards any single commercial provider.

Where a registrant is under 18, we require a parent or legal guardian to register and to consent to the collection and use of the young person's data. We do not knowingly use children's data in ways that could harm their wellbeing, and we do not carry out behavioural tracking of children or direct advertising at them. A parent or guardian may contact us at any time to access, correct, or ask us to delete their child's data.

Understanding whether the Festival works, and contributing to knowledge about arts and health in the Global South, is part of why the Festival exists. To do this we collect feedback and, in some activities, wellbeing measures.

• For our own reports and for sharing what we learn, we combine and anonymise responses so that individual people cannot be identified.
• Where we want to use information that could identify you for a specific research study, we will ask for your separate and specific consent for that study, and you are free to say no without affecting your participation in the Festival.
• Formal research that forms part of the Festival's clinical programme is carried out under the review and approval of an independent ethics committee, and is governed by the terms of that approval.

We photograph, film, and record some events to document, evaluate, and promote the Festival. You may appear in this material, and we may use it on our website, in reports, on social media, and in future Festival communications.

If you do not want to be photographed or recorded, please tell the staff or facilitator at the event, and we will make reasonable efforts to respect this, particularly in sessions of a personal or sensitive nature. You can also ask us later to stop using an identifiable image of you in material we control, and we will make reasonable efforts to do so, though we may not be able to recover material already published or shared by others.

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not share it with sponsors or partners for their own marketing.

We share data only in these situations:

• Service providers who act for us. We use trusted providers to run the Festival, such as a payment gateway to process payments, online form and survey tools to collect registrations and feedback, a website host, and email and communication tools. They may only use your data to provide their service to us, under our instructions.
• Partners delivering an event with us. Where a specific event is delivered together with a partner and they need your details to run it, we share only what is necessary for that event, and we tell you where this applies.
• Legal and safety reasons. We may share data where the law requires it, to respond to a valid request from an authority, or to protect the safety of a person as described in Section 4.

Some of our service providers may store or process data on systems located outside India. Where this happens, we take reasonable steps to see that your data remains protected and is handled in line with this policy and with applicable law.

Our website uses cookies and similar tools to help it work properly and to understand how it is used. You can control cookies through your browser settings. Turning some cookies off may affect how parts of the website work. Further detail is available at [link to cookie information, if you publish one].

Under Indian data protection law, you have the right to:

• access the personal data we hold about you and information about how we use it;
• correct or update data that is inaccurate or incomplete;
• ask us to erase your data where it is no longer needed for the purpose you gave it;
• withdraw consent you previously gave;
• nominate another person to exercise your rights on your behalf in the event of your death or incapacity;
• raise a grievance with us about how we handle your data.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us using the details in Section 12. We will respond within a reasonable time. If you are not satisfied with how we have handled your concern, you may escalate it to the Data Protection Board of India.

We keep your personal data only for as long as we need it.

• Registration and contact details are kept for the current Festival cycle and for a reasonable period afterwards so that we can plan future editions, unless you ask us to delete them sooner.
• Financial and transaction records are kept for as long as we are required to keep them under tax and accounting law.
• Feedback and evaluation responses are anonymised once the relevant evaluation is complete, after which they can no longer be linked to you.
• Photographs and recordings may be kept in the Festival's archive, subject to your right to ask us to stop using an identifiable image of you.

We take reasonable technical and organisational steps to keep your data secure and to limit access to it. No system can be guaranteed to be completely secure, but we work to protect your data and to respond promptly if something goes wrong. If a data breach is likely to affect you, we will act in line with our legal obligations, which may include notifying you and the Data Protection Board of India.

If you have a question, a request about your data, or a complaint, please contact:

grievances.dahf@gmail.com

We will acknowledge your request and aim to resolve it within a reasonable time.

We may update this policy from time to time. The version published on our website is the current one, and we will show the date it was last updated at the top. Where a change is significant, we will make reasonable efforts to bring it to your attention.