Privacy Policy

Welcome to District - Connecting Arts and our website at www.the-district.de. At District - Connecting Arts, we take the protection of your data very seriously, and below, we explain what data we collect when you use our website and services and how it is used.

General Information

What law applies?

In principle, we will only use your personal data by the applicable data protection laws, in particular Germany's Federal Data Protection Act" (Bundesdatenschutzgesetz) ("BDSG") and the EU counterpart the General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR").

Who is responsible for data processing?

The responsible party within the meaning of the BDSG and the GDPR is District - Connecting Arts, represented by

("District - Connecting Arts", "we", "us", or "our").

If you have any questions about this policy or our data protection practices, please contact us using legal@the-district.de or write to us at the above address.

What is Personal Data?

Personal Data is any information relating to personal or material circumstances that relates to an identified or identifiable individual. This includes, for example, your name, date of birth, e-mail address, postal address, or telephone number as well as online identifiers such as your IP address. In contrast, information of a general nature that cannot be used to determine your identity is not Personal Data. This includes, for example, the number of users of a website.

What is processing?

"Processing" means any operation or set of operations which is performed upon Personal Data, whether or not by automatic means. The term is broad and covers virtually any handling of data.

What are the legal bases of processing?

In accordance with the BDSG and the GDPR, we have to have at least one of the following legal bases to process your Data:

You have given your consent,
The data is necessary for the fulfilment of a contract / pre-contractual measures,
The data is necessary for the fulfilment of a legal obligation
The data is necessary to protect our legitimate interests, provided that your interests are not overridden.

Data we collect automatically

Log data

Each time you visit our website, our system automatically records the following data from the visiting device and stores it in a so-called log file: i) Name of the retrieved file, ii) date and time of the visit, iii) amount of data transferred, iv) message about successful retrieval, type of browser and version used, v) IP address (identification of the user's device), vi) Operating system of the visiting device, vii) Internet service provider of the visiting device, viii) the website from which you access our website, and ix) which of our website pages you are accessing. The legal basis for processing is our legitimate interest.

Hosting

To provide our website, we use the services of Midnight Communications Ltd (S1, The Old Market, Upper Market St, Brighton and Hove, Hove BN3 1AS, United Kingdom), who process all data to be processed in connection with the operation of our website on our behalf. The legal basis for the data processing is our legitimate interest in providing our website.

Content Management System

We use the Content Management System (CMS) of Ghost Foundation Ltd (160 Robinson Road, #14-04 SBF Center, 068914, Singapore) to publish and maintain the created and edited content and texts on our website. This means that all content and texts submitted to our website are transferred to Ghost. The legal basis for this processing is our legitimate interest.

Infrastructure

The infrastructure services used by us to operate our website are DigitalOcean, LLC, (101 6th Ave, New York, NY 10013, USA and Suite 7 Savant House, 63-65 Camden High Street, London, United Kingdom, NW1 7JL.). In doing so DigitalOcean, processes inventory data, contact data, content data, usage data, metadata and communication data of customers, interested parties and visitors of our website and services, based on our legitimate interests.

Content Delivery Network

We also use jsDelivr's (Prospect One Sp., Krolweska 65A, 30-081 Krakow, Poland) Content Delivery Network (CDN) to distribute our online content. A CDN is a network of regionally distributed servers operated by our technical service providers that are interconnected via the Internet. When you visit our website, your device's browser transmits information to these service providers, which is collected in corresponding server log files. The server log files are usually anonymized and then transmitted without personal reference. The server log files include in particular i) information on the browser and operating system used, ii) the previously visited pages (so-called referral URL), iii) the IP address of the device used, iv) the name of the Internet provider, and v) the date, time of all page views including the amount of data transferred. The legal basis for the processing is our legitimate interest.

Cookies

We use so-called cookies on our website. Cookies are pieces of information that are transmitted from our web server or third-party web servers to your web browser and stored there for later retrieval. Cookies may be small files or other types of information storage. There are different types of cookies: i) Essential Cookies. Essential cookies are cookies to provide a correct and user-friendly website; and ii) Non-essential Cookies. Non-essential Cookies are any cookies that do not fall within the definition of essential cookies, such as cookies used to analyze your behaviour on a website ("analytical" cookies) or cookies used to display advertisements to you ("advertising" cookies).

As set out in the German Data Protection and Privacy in Telecommunications and Telemedia Act ("TTDSG") and the EU`s Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive ("PECD"), we need to obtain consent for the use of Non-essential Cookies. For further information on the cookies we use, please refer to our Cookie Policy. The legal basis for processing is our legitimate interest and your consent.

Our website uses a cookie consent tool to obtain your consent to the storage of cookies and to document this consent. When you enter our website, the following Personal Data is transferred to us: i) Your consent(s) or revocation of your consent(s); ii) Your IP address; iii) Information about your browser; iv) Information about your device; v) Time of your visit to our website. For further information on the cookies we use, please refer to our Cookie Policy. The basis for processing is our legitimate interest and your consent.

Links to other websites

Please note that if you use a link from our website to a third-party website, that third party may also set new cookies that are not covered by this policy. In such cases, we recommend that you read the cookie policy on the third-party website itself.

YouTube

We have integrated components from YouTube (Google LLC of 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA and Google Ireland Ltd of Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland) The integration requires that YouTube can perceive the IP address of the user. The IP address is required to send the video content to the user's browser. If you click on a YouTube component (video) on our website, your internet browser will be prompted by the component to download a corresponding representation of the component as well as place certain cookies. In this way, YouTube knows which specific sub-pages you have visited. The legal basis for the data processing is our legitimate interest and your consent.

SoundCloud

Plugins of the social network SoundCloud Limited (Berners House, 47-48 Berners Street, London W1T 3NF, UK) may be integrated into our pages. When you visit our pages, a direct connection is established between your browser and the SoundCloud server after the plugin is activated. SoundCloud thereby receives the information that you have visited our site with your IP address. You can find more information on this in SoundCloud's privacy policy. The legal basis for the data processing is our legitimate interest and your consent.

Data we collect directly

Contacting us

In addition to your name, e-mail address, IP address or telephone number, if provided, we usually collect the context of your message which may also include certain Personal Data. The Personal Data collected when contacting us is to handle your request and the legal basis is both your consent and contract.

Marketing

Insofar as you have given us your separate consent to process your data for marketing and advertising purposes, we are entitled to contact you for these purposes via the communication channels you have given your consent.

You may give us your consent in several ways including by selecting a box on a form where we seek your permission to send you marketing information, or sometimes your consent is implied from your interactions or contractual relationship with us. Where your consent is implied, it is on the basis that you would have a reasonable expectation of receiving a marketing communication based on your interactions or contractual relationship with us.

Direct Marketing generally takes the form of email but may also include other less traditional or emerging channels. These forms of contact will be managed by us, or by our contracted service providers. Every directly addressed marketing sent or made by us or on our behalf will include a means by which you may unsubscribe or opt-out.

If you have consented to receive our newsletter, we will use your name and email address to send you information about us, promotions, and news. You can revoke your consent to receive the newsletter at any time with effect in the future. You will find the unsubscribe link at the end of each newsletter. The revocation leads to the deletion of the collected user data. The legal basis is your consent as well as our legitimate interest. Our Newsletter is sent using the Services of Mailgun (Sinch AB (publ), Lindhagensgatan 112, 112 51 Stockholm, Sweden)

Economic analyses and market research

For business reasons, we analyze the data we have on business transactions, contracts, enquiries, browsing behaviour etc., whereby the group of persons concerned may include contractual partners, interested parties, and users of our services.

The analyses are carried out for business evaluations and market research. The analyses serve us alone and are not disclosed externally and are processed using anonymous analyses with summarized and or anonymized values. Furthermore, we consider the privacy of users and process the data for analysis purposes as pseudonymously as possible and, if feasible, anonymously (e.g., as summarized data).

General

We have a presence on social media based on our legitimate interest (currently, Facebook, and Instagram (both by Meta Platforms Inc., 1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA, or if you are a resident of the EU, Facebook Ireland Ltd, 4 Grand Canal Square, Grand Canal Harbour, Dublin 2, Ireland), YouTube (Google) and SoundCloud).

Contact and interaction

If you contact or interact with us via social media platforms, we and the respective social media platform are jointly responsible for the processing of your data and enter into a so-called joint-controller agreement. The legal basis is our legitimate interest, your consent or, in some cases, the initiation of a contractual performance, if any.

We refer to our offered social media presence with links. Unlike social media plugins, links do not cause the social media platform to learn of your visit when you access our site. However, like any link, they do lead to your data being processed by the social media platform at the latest when you click on the link. As a rule, the social media platform stores cookies on your device or even your usage behaviour in your account, especially if you are logged in yourself. The social media platform may use your data to analyze your usage behaviour and use it for (interest-based) advertising. This may result in advertising being displayed to you inside and outside the social media platform.

Principles of Processing Personal Data

Storage and Retention
At the time of data collection, for example in the context of a contractual relationship, we process and store Personal Data from you. We process and store your Personal Data only to achieve the respective processing purpose or for as long as a legal retention period exists. Once the purpose has been achieved or the retention period has expired, the corresponding data is routinely deleted. Depending on the document and legal requirement, the retention and documentation periods specified therein are five years (HGB), six years (A0) or ten years (HGB).

Security

Our website uses SSL or TLS encryption to ensure the security of data processing and to protect the transmission of confidential content, such as orders, login data or contact requests that you send to us. We have also implemented numerous security measures ("technical and organizational measures") for example encryption or need-to-know access, to ensure the most complete protection of Personal Data processed through this website.

Nevertheless, Internet-based data transmissions can always have security gaps, so that absolute protection cannot be guaranteed. Databases or data sets that include Personal Data may be breached inadvertently or through wrongful intrusion. Upon becoming aware of a data breach, we will notify all affected individuals whose Personal Data may have been compromised as expeditiously as possible after which the breach was discovered.

Special Category Data

Unless specifically required when using our services and explicit consent is obtained for that service, we do not process special category data.

Minors

We do not request Personal Data from minors and children and do not knowingly collect such data or pass it on to third parties.

Automated decision-making

Automated decision-making is the process of deciding by automated means without any human involvement. Automated decision-making including profiling does not take place.

Do Not Sell

We do not sell your Personal Data.

We will not disclose or otherwise distribute your Data to third parties unless this is i) necessary for the performance of our services, ii) you have consented to the disclosure, iii) or if we are legally obliged to do so e.g., by court order or if this is necessary to support criminal or legal investigations or other legal investigations or other legal proceedings; or proceedings at home or abroad or to fulfil our legitimate interests.

International Transfer

We may transfer your Personal Data to other companies as necessary for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy. To provide adequate protection for your Data when it is transferred, we have contractual arrangements regarding such transfers. We take all reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect the Personal Data we transfer.

Your Rights and Privileges

Privacy Rights

Under the BDSG and GDPR, you can exercise the following rights:
Right to information
Right to rectification
Right to object to processing
Right to deletion
Right to data portability
Right of objection
Right to withdraw consent
Right to complain to a supervisory authority
Right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing.

If you have any questions about the nature of the Personal Data we hold about you, or if you wish to exercise any of your rights, please contact us.

Updating your information

If you believe that the information we hold about you is inaccurate or that we are no longer entitled to use it and want to request its rectification, deletion, or object to its processing, please do so by contacting us.

You can revoke the consent you have given at any time by contacting us. The legality of the data processing carried out until the revocation remains unaffected by the revocation.

Access Request

If you wish to make a Data Subject Access Request, you may inform us in writing of the same. We will respond to requests regarding access and correction as soon as reasonably possible. Should we not be able to respond to your request within thirty (30) days, we will tell you why and when we will be able to respond to your request. If we are unable to provide you with any Personal Data or to make a correction requested by you, we will tell you why.

Complaint to a supervisory authority

You have the right to complain about our processing of Personal Data to a supervisory authority responsible for data protection. The supervisory authority on the federal level is the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (BfDI) (www.bfdi.bund.de) is the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection. The North Rhine-Westphalia Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (LDI NRW) (www.ldi.nrw.de) is the relevant authority in NRW. However, we would appreciate the opportunity to address your concerns before you contact the BfDI or the LDI NRW.

Validity and questions

This Privacy Policy was last updated on Wednesday, 23rd of August, 2023, and is the current and valid version. However, we want to point out that from time to time due to actual or legal changes a revision to this policy may be necessary.

If you have any questions about this policy or our data protection practices, please feel free to email legal@the-district.de or write to us at the above address.