What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files of letters and numbers with an expiry date which are stored in your browser on your computer or mobile device. A cookie is created when the browser you use to look at web pages loads a particular website. The website sends information to the browser which then creates a text file (cookie). Every time you return to the same website, your browser retrieves and sends this file to the website's server. Computer cookies are created not just by websites, but also by other sites that run ads, widgets, or other elements on the page being loaded. When the cookie reaches its expiry date, your browser discards it. 

A cookie records information relating to your internet activity such as whether you have visited our website before. It stores the information on your device (your computer/tablet/phone). The cookies we use on our website don't collect personally identifiable information about you and we only disclose anonymised aggregated usage data to third parties. 

The cookies we send to your device only relate to your use of our website; they don't have any other effect on your device. 
 

Consenting to the use of cookies

You are presented with a pop-up when you first visit our website, which gives you the following options: 

• Accept all cookies 
• Reject all cookies - which makes an exception for any cookies which are strictly required for the site to function correctly
• Cookies Settings - which allows you to select which groups of cookies you wish to opt-in to 

If you close the pop-up without selecting anything, cookies will not be opted in to except for those that are strictly necessary. 

We categorise the cookies we have on our website in the following manner:

Strictly necessary cookies. These cookies are required for many features of our website to function. These cookies mean that our website can remember you as you browse around and are used, for example, for creating your online shopping basket when you book tickets or make purchases from our online shop. 

Functionality cookies. These are used to recognise you when you return to our website. This enables us to change what you see based on your previous activity. Where we include content or code from third parties on our website, these third parties may also make use of cookies, over which we have no control. 

Performance cookies. These allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by making sure users find what they are looking for easily. Google Analytics cookies do not collect personal information about you. For more information on the specific cookies google analytics uses and their respective expiration timings etc, please refer to Google's support documentation.

Targeting cookies. These cookies are set at our request by third parties, e.g., the videos on our website are embedded from a third party -  YouTube, so YouTube uses a targeting cookie. These  are used to track your journey from outside our website through to when you leave our website or checkout when purchasing tickets or using our online shop. They allow us to target our marketing campaigns for our productions and other activities more effectively as we can see if a visitor has come to our website having clicked on an advert we have placed elsewhere on the internet. No personally identifiable information is stored. Opting out of these cookies needs to be done via the third party and does not mean you won’t see advertising when you are online, but it will mean that any advertising you see will not be tailored to you. You can manage the third party cookies easily by visiting optout.networkadvertising.org 

On occasion we work with third parties to advertise through third party platforms, such as social media advertising activity. No personally identifiable information is shared, but, for data analytics and targeted advertising, the third party will be given access to website usage data including purchase value and pages viewed. 

You can find out more about cookies at allaboutcookies.org and individual cookies on cookiepedia.co.uk

HOW CAN YOU CONTROL THE USE OF COOKIES FROM OUR WEBSITE?

If you don't want to opt-in to certain types of cookies when you use our website, you can adjust the selections you choose through our cookie consent mechanism when you first land on our website.
If you wish to change your selection you can either hard refresh the page (holding down shift when refreshing the page on your browser) or alternatively you could choose to specifically clear your device's cache for our domain.

Below is an example of the GDPR version of our cookie consent mechanism on the RSC's website. Please note, you may see a slightly altered version of this dependong on where your device suggests you are geographically, for instance, outside of the UK/EU you may see a slightly different version of these consent options.

Additionally, below is an example of the categories of cookies users can set specific consents for should they wish to tailor their opt-in to specific usage.

There are also settings you can change on your device's browser which can be used to automatically block or prevent certain types of cookies and trackers from being accepted. Your web browser's help function or the company's support/knowledge base on their website should tell you how to do this.

It is worth bearing in mind however, that some websites will not function properly without certain functional cookies. This includes some of the facilities on our website, and whilst we endeavour to ensure the primary functions of our website are adhered to, it could be possible for settings you make on your personal devices to block such functionality from being possible.

We are unable to support changes made to personal devices which prevent you from performaing core functionality on our site, such as purchasing tickets, and would encourage users who experience such issues to reset their browser settings and/or to clear their cache for our domain and start afresh should this occur.

Consent for a selection of targeting third parties can be managed in bulk through optout.networkadvertising.org.

Contact Us

Questions, comments and requests regarding this Cookies Policy are welcomed and should be addressed to GDPR@rsc.org.uk

Policy last updated: April 2024