Privacy Notice

We collect your personal information in a number of ways which are described below:

1. When you contact us to book tickets over the telephone or by email
2. When you book tickets either online, on the telphone or in person at one of our museums or sites
3. When you contact us to arrange a research visit
4. When you enter into a competition operated by us or one of our partners
5. When you log on to use the free Wi-Fi at our museums
6. When you visit our websites, including if you sign up to one of our email newsletters, complete forms, shop online at our online shops, apply for a job or volunteer with us, create an online account with us, or post a comment on a blog. If you have cookies enabled on your web browser, in such circumstances, we may use cookies to collect information about your visit as you move through our websites. For more information about this please see section 10 below on Cookies
7. When you participate in an event at one of our museums or sites which is recorded or photographed
8. When we record information about you in respect of an incident on one of our sites.
9. When you take part in a research project or focus group
10. When you make a donation or adopt an object
11. When you respond to a survey we provide to you
12. When you interact with us on social media (for example by ‘liking’ our pages on Facebook) depending on your privacy settings on such platforms
13. When you complete online forms, such as for general contact; educational bookings or group visits. These details are emailed to relevant staff within SMG to provide appropriate services and may be added to our customer relationship management system where we have said this will happen
14. We also may collect information about you from third parties (as detailed further below in section 3)
15. If you otherwise contact us by telephone, email or post. Telephone calls to the contact centre are recorded for training purposes

We may collect and process the following information from you:

Information obtained directly from you (for example, in person, over the phone, by post, or when you interact with us online. We may collect:

• Name
• Email address
• Postal address
• Contact telephone number

Where relevant we may also collect:

• Payment Card details (we will not hold such information for any longer than necessary to process your transaction)
• Delivery address(es) and/or Billing address(es)
• Email subscription preferences
• Details of goods and services purchased by you
• Information as to whether or not you are a tax payer to enable us to claim Gift Aid on your donation
• Your image where you have participated in a recorded event at one of our museums or sites
• Where you have left us a legacy, any information you have provided us with to administer this, such as details of your next of kin, executor or solicitor
• Information that you provide when you enter a competition or a promotion by us or one of our partners
• Information provided in correspondence when you contact us
• Information that you provide when you complete surveys that we use for research purposes
• Direct debit details for ongoing payment arrangements
• Your MAC address to provide a seamless Wi-Fi service whilst in our museums
• Any particular access or dietary requirements you may have to help us improve your visit
• Year Group of visitors for school trips or other events and activities, for the purpose of reporting  
• We may collect additional information where we believe you may be interested in supporting our museums (this is described in section 3 below under the heading “When we wish to better understand you and your potential interest in supporting our museums”)

When you visit any of our websites (including games and apps we provide – as we host them on web servers) we may use cookies and other similar technologies (including Google Analytics) as well as collect other information from you which is described in section 10 below.

We may also obtain information available from other external sources about you and combine it with information we hold about you. This will only be done if this information is publicly available (for example on Companies House or the land registry) or if you have given permission to a third party to share this information. This is described in section 3 below under the heading “When we wish to better understand you and your potential interest in supporting our museums”.

Children’s personal data 

We do not intentionally collect children's personal data (anyone under 13 years old) without ensuring we have explicit consent from their parent or guardian. Personal data about children and young people is only accessible by our staff on a strictly need-to-know basis. 

Where we provide online services likely to be accessed by a minor, the best interests of the child are our primary consideration. We won't use the personal data of children or young people for marketing purposes. 

Special category personal data 

Special category data is defined in Article 9 UK GDPR as personal data revealing:

• racial or ethnic origin
• political opinions
• religious or philosophical beliefs
• trade union membership
• genetic data
• biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person
• data concerning health, or
• data concerning a natural person’s sex life or sexual orientation.

As a matter of course, we do not process special category data, but on very rare occasions it may be necessary to ensure that we can effectively provide a service to you, or so you can best enjoy what the museum has to offer. For example, we may need information regarding accessibility requirements so that you are able to access and enjoy our facilities and activities or when we record your personal experiences related to our Collection. We may also need to process special category information, such as medical information, when recording and managing incidents.

Criminal conviction data

Article 10 UK GDPR covers processing in relation to criminal convictions and offences or related security measures. In addition, section 11(2) of the DPA 2018 specifically confirms that this includes personal data relating to the alleged commission of offences or proceedings for an offence committed or alleged to have been committed, including sentencing. This is collectively referred to as ‘criminal offence data’.

When we carry out due diligence research in order to accept support and donations, or when you apply to work with us as a colleague or volunteer, we may access special category information or information relating to criminal offences or convictions.

We may use your information in the following ways:

To fulfil our obligations under a contract with you and to otherwise carry out our business

This includes:

• fulfilling purchases you have made of our goods and services (including our exhibitions and other commercial experiences)
• securely processing your payments (although please be aware we will not hold your payment details for any longer than necessary to process your transaction)
• administering your tickets being visible in your digital wallet such as Apple Wallet or Google Wallet
• administering your donation(s) to us, including processing Gift Aid and corresponding with you about your one-off or regular donation(s)
• contacting you with any important information in relation to your purchase of goods or services including confirmation of your orders, reminders, details of any changes, delays or other information relevant to your booking, thank you letters for donations. This may be via email, telephone, post or SMS
• contacting you in relation to the renewal of any regular monthly or annual agreement you have with us (for example, annual passes to our Wonderlab galleries, Power Up experiences or a membership) This may be via email, telephone or post
• contacting you in relation to any competition you may have entered into with us
• for the internal administration of any of your purchases from us
• contact you to respond to your queries (for example, if you email us with a question)
• improving our websites and online services
• anonymously fulfilling reporting obligations to our funders
• making an enquiry regarding booking a museum venue for an event
• entering into a brand licensing agreement with us
• circumstances where you are named as a signatory on a commercial contract that we have entered into, or we are seeking to enter into

When we have your consent

If we have asked your permission to do so in advance we shall use your information to:

• send you emails about events, fundraising and activities at our museums or events held within our museums produced by third parties in accordance with your specified preferences. We may also occasionally include selected information about events at other organisations at the foot of emails. We will endeavour to ensure that these events are of interest to the email subscribers
• email you in relation to specific event or update about our museums.
• contact you to ask you to respond to surveys or take part in focus groups and photoshoots
• use your image to promote our museums and activities where you have participated in a photoshoot or recorded event at one of our museums or sites
• share your details with other specific third party partners who will contact you to let you know how they are using your information such as a conference happening at the museum
• continue to contact you in relation to opportunities to support our museums financially (this is described further below in this section under the heading “When we wish to better understand you and your potential interest in supporting our museums”)
• communicate with you and record your participation in a research project or focus group

When we have a legal obligation to do so

In appropriate circumstances we shall use your information to fulfil our legal obligations which may include:

• the use of CCTV and other audio-video recording equipment including body-worn cameras on our premises for monitoring and security purposes
• detecting and reducing the risk of fraudulent transactions in person or online
• undertaking due diligence to detect fraud, money laundering and credit risk and protect the reputation of our museums
• to keep our databases up to date
• for our financial records, including for Gift Aid purposes
• such other obligations as are imposed on us from time to time
• deleting or updating the information we hold about you if we learn such information is inaccurate.
• complying with your data rights (as further described below in section 5)
• Health and Safety implications if appropriate, for example reporting incidents.
• compliance with any legal requirements, such as the short-term requirements that were instituted for NHS Test and Trace during the COVID-19 pandemic, in the interest of keeping our visitors and colleagues safe when visiting our sites.

When it is in our legitimate interest to do so

We shall use your information where it is in our legitimate interest to do so, to:

• learn about your interests and preferences so that we can provide you information which is relevant and interesting to you as well as targeting our marketing so that it’s more relevant to you
• classify our visitors and audience into groups or segments by attitudes and behaviours, using the information you provide us with (through your interactions with us and our museums including when you respond to our surveys). These segments help us to:
  • understand our audience better and ensure we’re sending relevant information to each group; and
  • tailor and target our cultural programme and services to help us manage and improve them
• use pseudonymised details to guide advertising to you on social media platforms (such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) or through other third-party advertising that may appear on other websites you use. The information shared with these platforms is pseudonymised to protect your personal informationdeliver advertising to you and prospective visitors on social media sites. If you are a social media user we may ask the third-party providers of those platforms to find other registered users of their services who share similar interests and characteristics to you, which will be based on information that the third party holds about you and other registered users of its platform. This is known as advertising to a ‘lookalike’ audience advertising because we are seeking to advertise to other people who ‘look like’ you. This advertising method is based on data that you as a user of social media have provided to the platform independently and can edit at any time via your social media account settings.
• measure and understand how our audiences respond to a variety of marketing activity so we can ensure our activity is well targeted, relevant and effective
• send you marketing emails that do not require your consent (such as business to business communications)
• run the test version of our website and customer relationship management system that we use internally to pilot new features and ensure the smooth running of our web services
• identify and contact individuals who are in a position to support our museums financially (as further described below)
• retain your personal information on our secure customer relationship management system for the above purposes
• collect anonymous images and recordings in our museums 
• include an account of your experiences or other information you have provided to us about your visit 

When we are required to process personal data in performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of our official authority 

Under the National Heritage Act 1983, SMG’s public task can be defined as a responsibility to care for and add to the objects in the SMG Collection, make them available for study and research, to exhibit objects including by lending and borrowing objects, and in limited circumstances to remove objects from the Collection. Therefore, we will process your data under this legal basis if: 

• you are offering, donating or selling an object to the Museum or requesting or receiving a transfer of an object, personal data will be used to contact you and in any agreement for the transfer of title
• you are requesting, receiving or providing a loan, we will use the personal information you provide to contact you about the loan and help manage that loan 
• your personal information forms part of an object's history, history of ownership or an oral history recording
• you wish to access Collection, Library and Public Records items in one of our Reading Rooms
• you are captured in CCTV footage in and around SMG premises in order to ensure safety and security of the collections and the public.

When we wish to better understand you and your potential interest in supporting our museums

For a small number of individuals, we want to better understand their engagement with the Science Museum Group and their potential interest in supporting us further. Before contacting these individuals about supporting our museums, we may seek publicly available information to help us understand the background of people who may choose to support us and to ensure we make requests for support to those who may be able and willing to give.

In such circumstances we may collect the following information (in addition to that detailed in section 2 above): the individual’s previous interactions with our museums, job title(s), details of offices held, place of business, business networks, publicly available information in relation to the individual’s career, educational history, hobbies and interests, residence locations, languages spoken, donations to other organisations, wealth and assets, family (excluding information about children unless provided by that individual). We may also use publicly sourced images to help colleagues recognise individuals who have been invited to attend our events.

We use a variety of sources to obtain such information including newspaper websites, the official websites of other companies and charities, housing market websites, and the organisations in the list below:

• Charity Commission: Register of Charities in England and Wales— https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/charity-commission 
• Companies House: Register of Companies UK Registrar of Companies— https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/companies-house 
• Creditsafe: Database of company information - https://www.creditsafe.com/gb/en.html
• Factiva: Aggregated content including news and business data from both licensed and free sources— https://global.factiva.com
• Factary Phi: Database of donations and donors to the UK non-profit sector— https://factary.com/what-we-do/phi-donations-database/
• Funds Online: Database of grant-making charitable trusts in the UK—https://fundsonline.org.uk/ 
• GuideStar: Information about US Foundations— https://www.guidestar.org/
• LinkedIn: Business and employment-focused social network —https://www.linkedin.com/
• Scottish Charity Regulator: Register of Charities in Scotland—https://www.oscr.org.uk
• Who’s Who: Autobiographical entries of noteworthy and influential people who impact British life—http://www.ukwhoswho.com/

We consider that it is in our legitimate interest to collect and use this information and, if we deem it appropriate, to contact such individuals. After contacting such individuals, we shall ask for their consent to continue to contact them in relation to opportunities to support our museums and related activities and opportunities.

If we elect not to contact such individuals or if they tell us they do not wish to be contacted at any time, we shall delete the information we have collected, only retaining such key identifying information as will allow us to ensure they are not contacted or considered for contact again.

We may share your personal information with the following organisations:

• service providers working on our behalf. For example this may include payment processing, database services, website hosting services, providers or online and/or cloud services, printing and mailing organisations, marketing agencies and email delivery services
• third party data services and analytics platforms who assist us with segmenting and understanding our audiences (as described above in section 3 above)
• Insurers when pursuing an insurance claim

If we have your permission, or it is otherwise made expressly clear in advance, we may share your personal information with:

• named third parties if you ticked an opt in to allow us to provide your details to such third parties when you purchased goods and services from us
• other organisations such as competition organisers, sponsors and exhibition collaborators where it is made clear that such organisations shall be provided with and permitted to use your personal information, subject to such third parties’ terms (and privacy notice). We recommend that you check the data protection notices provided by such third parties and contact their Data Protection Officer (or equivalent) if you have any queries
• partner venues where you have bought tickets hosted at such venues
• HMRC where we have your permission to claim Gift Aid on a donation you have made

If we are required to do so by law (for example under money laundering or charity law legislation, or under a court order) we may share your personal information with the police, other law enforcement or regulatory bodies or a government authority investigating unlawful activities.

You have the following rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data, these rights include:

• To be informed about how we use your personal data (the purpose of this notice);
• To have accurate information held about you, and to have your details updated when they are inaccurate. If you have an online account you may amend your personal details and email contact preferences at any time. If you prefer, you can contact us by email, telephone, by mail, or in person to update your details with us;
  • To ask us to delete your data (often called the “right to be forgotten”). We might not always be able to delete it, under the law there are some circumstances in which we will need to, or are entitled to, hold on to it;
  • To get a copy of your personal data. A subset of your data (limited to data that you have provided to us) is available in a machine-readable format if required;
  • To object to how we use your data, and request that we stop using it for certain purposes. There may be circumstances where you ask us to restrict such uses of your information, but we are entitled to refuse that request. However, we shall always stop using your data for email marketing purposes at your request. Each marketing email we send to you will include details on how to change your communications preferences or unsubscribe from future communications.
  • To withdraw your consent, where we are using your personal information with your consent (as described above in the ‘Why We Collect Your Personal Data and How we use it” section).
  • To ask us to transfer your data to another organisation, where your data is held in a machine-readable, commonly used way, and can be safely transferred.
• If we make a decision about you using automated means, you have right to request that the decision be reviewed by a human; and
• The right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner (www.ico.org.uk) if you think that any of your rights have been infringed by us.

To exercise your rights, please use our contact details below.

We may request additional information so that we can verify your identity (and to ensure your personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it). This may include:

• A colour copy of your driving licence, birth certificate or utility bill
• If your request relates to a specific transaction with the Science Museum Group, evidence of that transaction (i.e. a receipt or confirmation)

We may contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to help us enact your rights in accordance with the law.

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. However, occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complicated or you have made a number of requests. In such circumstances, we will notify you.

Transfer of data abroad

The data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area (‘EEA’). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for us or for one of our suppliers. Such staff may be engaged in, among other things, the fulfilment of your order, the processing of your payment details and the provision of support services. By submitting your personal data, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this notice. 

In all such cases we shall ensure that any transfer of your information is compliant with data protection law.

However, please note that the transmission of data via the Internet is not completely secure. Your communications may be routed through a number of countries before being delivered. We cannot guarantee the security of any data transmitted to our websites, however, once we have received your data, we will use adequate security procedures to prevent unauthorised access

What are cookies and how do we use them?

Cookies are pieces of data that a website can transfer to a user’s web browser. Some cookies collect, use and store personal data, such as IP address, device information, browsing behaviour and cookies consent preferences.  

The cookies may remain on your computer after you leave the website, but you can manually delete them on most browsers. Most web browsers are pre-set to accept cookies. Some cookies store data just for the time you are on the website, such as any preferences, language selection or what is in your shopping basket. These are called session cookies and are not stored on your computer after you have left the website. 

Some cookies are referred to as 'first party' and means they are used by the website you are visiting, for example the Science Museum Group website. 'Third party' cookies are used by other organisations on our website but with our permission, such as advertisers or social media platforms. 

A pixel tag (also known as a web beacon or clear GIF) is an invisible 1×1 pixel that is placed on web pages. When you access these web pages, pixel tags generate a generic notice of the visit and allow us to set or read our cookies. We use pixel tags in combination with cookies to track activity on our websites, particularly to track visits, times and dates of visits, pages viewed, country and city locations, devices used, purchases, sources visited before coming to our websites, demographics and email sign ups. We use these for reporting and for marketing purposes to retarget advertising and for lookalike modelling. This information is used to make our websites and advertising more relevant to your interests. 

For more information on cookies and their uses, visit the cookies page on the Information Commissioner’s Office website. 

When you visit our websites 

The Science Museum Group operates several websites including (but not limited to) the following: 

• Science Museum Group 
• Science Museum 
• Science Museum Shop 
• Hire the Science Museum 
• National Railway Museum 
• Hire the Railway Museum 
• Locomotion 
• Locomotion Models 
• National Science and Media Museum 
• Science and Industry Museum 
• Hire the Science and Industry Museum 
• Science and Innovation Park 
• Hire the Science and Innovation Park 
• Science Museum Group Journal 
• Wonderlab+ 
• SMG Collections Online 

If you agree to our websites placing cookies on your web browser, the websites will collect information about your visit as you move through them. We use cookies that enable you to navigate the sites, enhance your experience and analyse how you are using our website to improve our functionality and marketing.  

We use this data to report on high-level website visits and to inform the development of our services (for example, if we know which web browsers most of our visitors are using, we can allocate website development resources accordingly).  

You can browse the Science Museum Group’s websites without telling us who you are or revealing any personal information about yourself. 

Follow the links below for a full list of the cookies used on our websites and the option to change your cookie settings. 

• Science Museum Group
• Science Museum 
• Hire the Science Museum 
• National Railway Museum 
• Hire the Railway Museum 
• Locomotion 
• Locomotion Models 
• National Science and Media Museum 
• Science and Industry Museum 
• Hire the Science and Industry Museum 
• Science and Innovation Park 
• Hire the Science and Innovation Park 
• Science Museum Group Journal 

How to manage cookies?

You are in control of cookies on your device, and you can opt In and out of the cookies on our websites.  

If you prefer not to receive cookies, you can select to reject them in the websites’ cookie consent banner or by visiting the Cookie Settings for each website listed in the previous section 

If you want to restrict or block web browser cookies on your device, you can do this through your browser settings. Here is some guidance for the most common browsers: 

• Chrome 
• Internet Explorer 
• Safari 
• Microsoft Edge 
• Firefox 

Third party cookies and similar technologies 

There are some third parties who might also collect cookie data on our behalf. You can find out more about their respective cookie policies here:  

• Shopify, eCommerce platform  
• Facebook and Instagram, Meta   
• X 
• Google and YouTube