Privacy Policy

Better is committed to protecting your personal information and being transparent about the information we hold, whether you are a collaborator, viewer, job applicant, customer, website visitor, or mailing list sign up.

The purpose of this policy is to provide a clear explanation about how Better Creating collects, holds processes and stores your information and the measures in place to keep it safe and secure, whether it is collected or provided online, by phone, email, in person, by letter or through social media.

1. Contacting Better Creating

For the purpose of the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation, 2018) the data controller is Simon Pittman, trading as Better Creating (a sole trader). If you want to know what information we hold about you or if you have any other queries in relation to this Privacy Notice, our contact details are as follows:

Email: hello@bettercreating.com FAO Simon

2. Personal Information

Better Creating collects, holds and processes personal data from collaborators, applicants, customers and online audience members.

When we say personal data or personal information, we mean the details that you may provide about yourself and any information which identifies you, such as your name, address, email address, telephone number, country of residence or any photographs.

We do hold some sensitive information when there is a clear reason for doing so. We will keep this information securely in password protected locations (mainly the current mailing List Manager Mailer Lite.

3. Collecting your Information

We may collect personal information about you when you ask about Better Creating’s activities, register for an event, make a donation or online purchase, sign up for a waiting list buy something from an online marketplace sign up for our newsletter, contact us online, by phone or in writing or collaborate with us on any of our productions or projects.

Most of the personal information we hold is provided directly from the person themselves, but some data could be provided by third parties such as fellow collaborators, referees, managers or partners.

Third party services most often also collect information on our behalf such as Gumroad, Lemon Squeezy and Mailer Lite. These companies will also have their own privacy statements.

Better Creating has social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Gumroad and Lemo Squeezy. Depending on your settings or the privacy policies for these sites, by connecting with us on any of these channels you might give us permission to access your information on those accounts or services.

4. How Better Creating uses your information

We will only use your information for the following purposes:

To provide you with information about our online content or activity that you have agreed to receive.
For marketing purposes where you have specifically consented to receive marketing communications from us (this includes downloading a product via third party platforms we sell on - Gumroad or Lemon Squeezy - where it is part of the download process.
For recruitment purposes.
To process online payments and set up direct debits.
To fulfil sales and purchases.
To communicate with participants of events and course about event details.
For internal record keeping.
To invite you to participate in surveys or research.
To develop aggregated data for analysis and reporting for the business
To analyse and improve the activities and content offered.

Additional information for job applicants, employees and collaborators:

If you apply for a freelance contract role with Better Creating, we will hold the personal information you provide to process your application and we may undertake monitoring of recruitment statistics as required by employment and data protection law.

If we want to disclose information to a third party, for example where we want to take a reference up or obtain “disclosure” from the Disclosure and Barring Service, we will not do so without asking you beforehand, unless the disclosure is required by law.

If you apply to work with Better Creating we’ll only hold your data for the purposes of that application. We won’t hold your personal information for any longer than is necessary for the purposes of that application, unless you give us permission to do so.

5. Security Measures

We take the security of your data seriously. All digital personal information has appropriate technical controls in place to protect your data; any sensitive information is kept encrypted or password protected locations and personal information is deleted when no longer required for the original purpose – notably mailing lists are stored on the third party providers system (Mailer Lite) and customer details are stored with third party sales platform accounts (Gumroad / Lemon Squeezy)

Where we use external companies that may process data on our behalf we will check that these companies comply with the law where they operate, and our policy before working with them.

Hard copies of personal information are rarely kept – but if they are, they are stored in locked locations with access limited to relevant staff only.

We will only share your data where we have your explicit and informed consent, unless we are required to disclose your details to the police, regulatory bodies or legal advisors for a lawful basis.

6. Retention of your data

We regularly review the length of time we keep personal data, and will

only keep your information for as long as required to complete the original purpose of collection.

Unsuccessful freelance job applicants will have their data deleted after six months after the appointment has been made. If a candidate was second choice or shortlisted for a role, we may retain their information if agreed with the applicant.

Better Creating maintains a retention schedule to track personal information held and to ensure that information that is no longer required for its original purpose is securely deleted in a timely manner. This allows us to track documents which may need to be retained for longer; for example, HR documents for employees must be retained for six years after employment ends for legal reasons.

7. Your Right to Access your Data

You have the right to request the information we hold about you at any time by submitting a written Data Subject Access Request. We will require proof of ID before releasing any information and will charge an administration fee of £10.

We will provide you with a description or copies of your information held by Better Creating within 30 days, unless your request is particularly complex, in which case it may take up to 3 months.

8. Your Right to Correct Incorrect Information and Your Right to Be Forgotten

You have the right to keep your personal data accurate and up to date. If you have reason to believe that Better Creating holds incorrect or out of date information about you, please make a written request by contacting hello@bettercreating.com and we will respond within 30 days regarding your request to rectify, erase or destroy that data.

You have the right to be forgotten. If you would like your personal data held by Better Creating to be erased, please make a written request by contacting hello@bettercreating.com. We will respond within 30 days.

We will erase the data as requested if it is no longer necessary for the purpose it was originally collected, or if you initially consented to us holding the information and have now withdrawn consent, if the information was collected and retained on a legitimate interest basis which no longer applies or we need to comply with a legal obligation.

The right to be forgotten does not apply when the information needs to be retained to perform a task in the public interest, comply with a legal obligation, or to exercise the right of freedom of expression and information, or for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims. The right will also not apply in cases where processing is required for public health purposes in the public interest.

Other reasons why a request to be forgotten may be denied is if it is manifestly unfounded or excessive or whether the request is repetitive in nature.

9. Privacy Notice Review

We regularly review this Privacy Notice to ensure that it is up to date and fit for purpose. We will notify you about any significant changes to the way we treat personal information by sending a notice to the primary email address you have provided or by placing a prominent notice on our website.

Last reviewed September 2023