About The Bee

The Bee is a literary magazine, an online platform, a podcast, and the heart of a writing community. Our mission is to nurture, publish and promote the best new working-class writing by new and established working-class writers and visual artists.

The Bee is published by New Writing North, edited by Richard Benson with art direction by David Rainbird.

New Writing North (NWN) is a registered charity and an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation, a publicly funded organisation working within a funding agreement framework. NWN also fundraises, earns income, and receives resources from public, private, and charitable bodies and individuals.

NWN is an independent charity registered in England and Wales (number 1062729) and a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales (number 3166037).

How to Contact Us

Please contact us if you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or your data, or if you wish to be removed from any communications or data processing activities.

Address enquiries to: Claire Malcolm, Chief Executive 

Email: claire@newwritingnorth.com

Write: The Bee, c/o New Writing North, 120 Squires Building, Northumbria University, Sandyford Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 8ST, UK. 

Policy Statement

This Privacy Policy sets out the ways in which we use your data and how you can hold us accountable for that.

We aim to be clear when we collect your data and not do anything you would not reasonably expect. Developing a better understanding of our subscribers, customers and supporters through their personal data allows us to make better editorial and design decisions to help support the achievement of The Bee’s mission. 

We are committed to protecting your privacy and data. We will use the information that we collect about you in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation 2018 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulation 2003.

The Information We Collect

You give us information when you subscribe to access content, submit content, receive our newsletter, by updating your contact information on and through our websites or by communicating with us. The information that we may hold about you may include:

If you consent to have your photo or video taken this may be published on our website, social media accounts or appear in the broadcast media.

We maintain a record of your transaction history, but we never store your payment card number. We keep a record of the emails we send you and we may monitor if you receive and open them so that we can make sure we are sending you the most relevant information. 

How We Use Your Data

We will use your data in a variety of clearly defined ways as follows:

General usage, which applies across our work

  1. Keeping a record of your relationship with us
  2. To ensure that we know how you prefer to be contacted
  3. To undertake anonymised research into our users and customers so that we can improve and refine our activities 
  4. To undertake research as part of commissioned programme and on behalf of partners to support consultation and strategy development.

If you are a member of our mailing list:

  1. To send you information about events, news and activities that may be of interest to you by email and post
  2. To encourage you to participate in fundraising campaigns to support our work
  3. To tell you about changes to our work and services.

If you donate to our work or organisation:

  1. To update you on the projects or areas of work that you support
  2. To administer your donation (including the processing of Gift Aid and associated declarations).

If you enter your work to The Bee’s submission window and/or your work is accepted for publication:

  1. To administer your work for the purpose of that programme or opportunity only
  2. To create anonymised statistical overviews of entries for the activity that we use to report to funders and stakeholders and to demonstrate the demand, reach and interest in our activities.
  3. To use anonymised data to monitor and evaluate and to support research into the impact of our work.

If you are a supplier: 

If you engage with us on social media:

If you do not want to receive information by email you have the option to change any of your contact preferences at any time by clicking unsubscribe on email newsletters or updating your preferences via your account with us.

Cookies

This website is operated by Ghost which uses Google Analytics to collect anonymous information such as the number of visitors to the site, and the most popular pages. 

Keeping this cookie enabled helps us to improve the website.

Third Parties

We will not sell, rent, or trade your personal data.

We will never share your personal data with any other third parties without your agreement unless required in order to fulfill our contract with you or allowed by law.

In general, third-party providers used by us to fulfill our contract with you will only collect, use, and disclose your information to the extent necessary to allow them to perform the services that they provide for us. These providers include the systems used for submitting applications, streaming video (e.g. YouTube and Vimeo) and audio (e.g. Spotify). We have agreements in place with each to ensure that your data is secure at all times and cannot be accessed or used for any other purpose.

We may share statistical and anonymised data drawn from your information with third parties such as Arts Council England who use this to analyse the reach of our activities and to understand patterns of engagement with arts activity in the UK. Undertaking statistical analysis of our activities assists us when reporting to funders, supporters, and stakeholders, helps us to make better decisions about how we develop and programme our activities and where they are delivered. 

We will never sell your personal data to an agency or other companies.

The Bee website, newsletters and social media contain links to other websites. Although the majority of them are our partners we are not responsible for the privacy practices of these, and you should read their own privacy information before providing them with your personal information.

How You Can Control Your Data

If you sign up to The Bee we will tell you about activities, opportunities, events and literary news and opportunities to support our work. Occasionally we may include information in these communications from our partner organisations and supporters. You can opt out from these communications at any time. Every email we send you tells you how you can unsubscribe.

How We Keep Your Data Safe

Your personal data will be held and processed on the Ghost platform and accessed by New Writing North, Richard Benson and David Rainbird. Where possible we aim to keep a single record for each user or customer. Your data is always held securely and access to information is strictly controlled. We do not process data outside of the UK.

We may need to disclose your details if required to the police, regulatory bodies, or legal advisors.

Your Rights

You have the following rights related to your personal data and interactions with us:

To exercise your rights in relation to the data that we hold on to please contact the Data Controller at New Writing North.

Please note that if you choose not to share your data this may affect New Writing North’s ability to provide the services you request.

Changes to This Policy

We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make any significant changes in the way we treat your personal information we will make this clear on our website or by contacting you directly.

Policy agreed April 2025.