What we know
about you.

This page says what we know about you, what we do with it, and how to make us forget it — in plain English, because that's how we'd want to be told. "We" are Arts Effect ([email protected]), and we're the "controller" of everything described here, which is legal-speak for: it's our responsibility.

The short version

• We don't set cookies, run analytics or use trackers. Nothing is stored on your device — ever.
• The only personal information we hold is what you type into our four forms: the enquiry form, the readiness check, the AI policy builder and the custom software interview.
• We use AI — OpenAI's API — to write readiness plans, and below we list exactly what it sees and what it never sees.
• The site is hosted by Railway in the United States, under UK-approved safeguards.
• Email [email protected] any time to see, correct or delete what we hold about you.

If you're just browsing

You can read every page of this site without telling us who you are, and without us trying to find out.

• No cookies. No analytics. No advertising trackers. Nothing stored in your browser.
• Like every website, our servers see your IP address as requests arrive. Ours is used two ways: a rate limiter holds it in memory for about fifteen minutes so bots can't hammer the forms — it's never written to our database — and the companies that run our infrastructure keep standard connection logs for a few days.
• The fonts on this site are served from our own server, so reading this page doesn't send your details to Google or anyone else.

That's genuinely the lot. There's no consent banner on this site because there's nothing to consent to.

If you take the readiness check

When you finish the check we store your fifteen answers, the scores we calculate from them, and your result. None of it has your name on unless you write it in.

Everything else is optional, and stored only if you choose to share it: a description of your organisation, notes you add to individual answers, your website address, and your email address if you'd like us to follow up.

If you give us a website address, our server visits a handful of pages on your site (up to four — your homepage plus pages like About or What's On), while you're answering, and reads the text on them — it identifies itself as Arts Effect while doing it, and gives up after a few seconds per page. An AI-written summary of your site is kept with your submission, along with the plan we write for you.

Readiness submissions are kept for 12 months, then deleted. Only Arts Effect staff can see them, and we use them for exactly what the small print on the check says: improving the tool, and following up if you asked us to.

If you draft an AI policy

When you finish the policy builder we store your organisation's name, your twelve answers and any notes you add. Your website and email address are optional and stored only if you share them — along with an AI-written summary of your site if we read it (the same visit described above) and the draft policy we write for you.

The finished draft lives at an unguessable link so you and your colleagues can download the Word copy — anyone you share that link with can too, so treat it like the document itself. Policy submissions are kept for 12 months, then deleted; only Arts Effect staff can see them, and we use them to improve the tool and follow up if you asked us to.

If you describe software you'd like built

This one is different from the other two tools, because the point of it is that we get in touch with a quote. So before the conversation starts we ask for your organisation's name, your name and your email address, and we keep them. We also keep everything you write during the interview — your description of what you wish existed, every answer, and the timeline and budget you give us at the end — plus an AI-written summary of your website if you gave us one (the same visit described above).

When you finish, the AI writes up a brief for us from the conversation, and that brief is emailed to us along with your details. You don't see the brief; you get a short summary of what we understood, on the page and by email, so you can tell us if we've got it wrong. Software brief conversations are kept for 2 years after our last exchange, like enquiries, because a quote is the start of a conversation; then we delete them. Only Arts Effect staff can see them.

If you get in touch

The enquiry form asks for your name, email, organisation, role, what you'd like help with, and a message, plus a few optional details — phone, organisation size, timeline, budget, and how you heard about us. We use them to reply to you and to come to a first conversation prepared. Nothing else.

You won't be added to a mailing list; we don't have one. We keep enquiries for up to 2 years after our last exchange — so if you come back to us next season we don't greet you as a stranger — and then we delete them.

The AI part, honestly

We're an AI consultancy, so it would be odd if we were cagey about this bit.

When the readiness check writes your plan, the policy builder writes your draft, or the software interviewer asks its next question and writes up the brief, it sends your answers, your notes, your organisation's details and the text of your website (if you shared one) to OpenAI, whose service generates the words. Two things worth knowing:

• Your email address is never sent to OpenAI. It stays with us.
• Under OpenAI's API terms, what we send isn't used to train their models. They keep requests for a short while to check for abuse, then delete them.

That's the only AI processing on this site. There's no profiling, there are no automated decisions made about you, and none of it happens without you clicking the button that starts it.

Where your data lives

Three companies help us run this site, and this is the honest map of them:

• Railway hosts the site and its database, on servers in the United States.
• Cloudflare sits in front of the site, handling security and delivery, the way it does for a large slice of the internet.
• OpenAI writes the readiness plans and draft policies, as described above — also in the United States.

Because Railway's and OpenAI's servers are in the US, information you give us leaves the UK. That's lawful — both operate under the UK-approved safeguards (standard contractual clauses) designed for exactly this — but we'd rather tell you plainly than bury it in clause 14.

Your rights, minus the jargon

UK data protection law gives you rights over what we hold, and we like them:

• See it — ask, and we'll send you a copy of everything we hold about you.
• Fix it — if something's wrong, we'll correct it.
• Delete it — ask, and it's gone.
• Object — tell us to stop using it for something, and we will, or we'll explain plainly why we can't.

All free, all answered within a month, all via [email protected]. If we ever let you down, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk — though we'd appreciate the chance to fix it first.

One more piece of honesty: this site can set exactly one cookie — the sign-in cookie for our own staff in the admin area. If you're not us, you'll never get it.

The details, in one table

When this page changes

If what we collect changes, this page changes the same day — and we'll say what's different rather than quietly swapping the file. Writing pages like this, ones people can actually read, is part of what our Policy work does for arts organisations, if you'd ever like one of your own.

Last updated: 7 September 2026.