01
Ask for what the job needs
A field earns its place by doing work in the answer we send back. Every extra box lowers the number of people who finish the form and adds one more thing we have to keep safe.
Legal · privacy notice
What we hold about you, and for how long.
This site runs on forms. A community applies, a vendor asks for a pitch, a reader ticks a mailing list, somebody reports a listing. Each of those puts a few facts about a person into our hands. This page lists every one of them, says why it is held, says when it goes, and gives you the address that makes it go sooner.
Current as of 29 August 2026 · rewritten and dated whenever a form changes
| Line | Where it stands |
|---|---|
| Who holds it | The Capital Cultures organising team, in Ottawa |
| Who answers for it | The privacy contact, at privacy@capitalcultures.com |
| Sold or rented | Never |
| Handed to a sponsor | Never |
| Advertising trackers | None on this site |
| Analytics | None on this site today |
| Deleting it | One message, answered by a person |
Five rules we wrote first.
These were settled before a single form went live, which is the only time such rules get written honestly. Everything further down this page follows from them.
Written before the forms · they constrain what a form may ask
Five rules · they decide what a form on this site may ask for
02
Three fields stay off every form
Date of birth, home address and citizenship. A festival application has no use for any of them, and holding them would turn a mailing list into a file on people.
03
Consent runs per letter type
News, festival announcements and participant letters are three separate ticks. None is ticked for you, one click ends any of them, and ending one leaves the others running.
04
An application is used for the application
What a community, a vendor, a volunteer or a performer sends us is read by the people handling that intake. Turning an application into marketing needs a separate tick on the form.
05
Deletion is one message
Write and it goes. The reply names what was removed and what a rolling backup still holds until it turns over, because saying «all gone» while a backup exists would be a lie.
Every form, and what it puts in our hands.
Each row is a form that is open on this site today. The middle column is the whole of what that form asks. A form that runs in two places — a short version on a section page and the full one on the page under it — is one row here, listed at its longest.
Every intake on the site · rebuilt from the pages themselves, 28 August 2026
| Form | What it asks | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Mailing list · the footer of every page, and the journal | Email, language, the lists you ticked, the wording you ticked them under, the date | To send the letters you asked for, and to prove you asked |
| Contact · /about/contact/ | Name, email, subject, organisation, language, your message | To answer you, and to route the message to the person who can |
| Community pavilion · /join/communities/ and /join/communities/apply/ | Organisation, community, legal status, registration or business number, years in Ottawa, contact person and their role, email, phone, size of crew, where you would cook, what you would show, what you would cook, what you have run before, how your community hears things, the edition you are aiming at, and the declaration set out under this table | To decide the first line-up with you, to size what the site has to support, and to hold the declaration the participant agreement asks for |
| Volunteer · /join/volunteers/ and /join/volunteers/apply/ | Name, email, phone, age band, roles, days, length of block, languages, whether you live in Ottawa, whether you come as a student or with a team, an emergency contact, anything we should know | To build the rota, to place you in a role the police check allows, and to reach somebody if you are hurt on site |
| Vendor pitch · /join/vendors/ and /join/vendors/apply/ | Business, contact, email, phone, kind of trade, what you sell, what you make yourself, the community you trade with, equipment, power draw, days, insurance, permits, experience, website | To plan the food street and the craft row, and to check the paperwork Ontario asks for |
| Performer · /join/performers/ | Ensemble, community, contact, email, phone, website, discipline, number of people, length of set, shortest set, years working, days, links to material, technical rider, access needs | To programme the stages and to size the technical plan |
| Academy waiting list · /join/academy/ | Name, email, organisation, role, courses you want, language, a question | To open the courses in the order people actually asked for them |
| Accreditation and passport notice · /join/accreditation/ | Name, email, role, how many people, organisation, a question | To write to you when accreditation opens in summer 2027 |
| Access request for the festival · /festival/accessibility/ | Name, email, phone, which day, what you need, how you want the answer | To arrange what you asked for. What you write about your health or your disability stays with the two coordinators who arrange it |
| Website barrier report · /legal/accessibility/ | The page, what happened, what you were using, name, email, how you want the answer | To fix the barrier and to write back telling you what we did |
| Article co-authoring · /cultures/ and each community article | Name, email, organisation, your role in it, what you can contribute, whether you want a byline | To write the article with the people it is about, and to credit them by name |
| Algonquin relations · /about/algonquin/ | Name, email, organisation, what it is about, your message | To answer a correction or an approach about that page, publicly where it is a correction |
| Board interest · /about/team/ | Name, email, the seat, what you bring, the region you live in, languages | To fill the first board, and to show a funder that the seats were offered openly |
| Partner enquiry · /partners/apply/ | Organisation, contact, email, phone, what you are offering, detail, when, sector | To have the right conversation with the right person |
| Sponsor deck · /partners/sponsors/ | Company, website, name, role, email, phone, what interests you, budget horizon, message | To send the deck and to book the conversation |
| Mission enquiry · /partners/embassies/ | Mission, country, contact, role, email, phone, what you can offer, the community, fiscal year, horizon, protocol notes | To answer at the right level of protocol, and to keep the offer and the pavilion apart |
| City and funders · /partners/funders/ | Organisation, name, email, phone, which desk, what you want, message | To answer a funding officer with the document they actually asked for |
| Media accreditation · /partners/media/ | Name, email, outlet, format, language, days, what you plan to cover | To issue a badge and to send the press kit |
| Marketplace listing · /market/sell/ | Seller and community, contact, email, phone, category, what you sell, about it, photographs and their state, price range, website, whether you also trade at the festival | To publish and moderate the catalogue |
| Marketplace report · /market/rules/ | The listing, what went wrong, details, name, email, which side you are on | To answer a complaint and to record why a listing came down |
| Journal · a place for the guide · /journal/guide/ | The place, category, community, area of the city, why, your connection to it, email | To check the suggestion with the business before anything is published |
| Journal · a story pitch · /journal/stories/ | The subject, the shape, why, community, your role, name, email | To commission it, and to answer you either way |
| Project proposal · /projects/ | The project, the idea, who it is for, what it needs, the stage it is at, community, name, email | To answer it and to place it in a season |
| Press kit and a demonstration · /kit/ | Organisation, contact, email, phone, community, what you plan | To show the kit to the people who would use it |
Three answers that need more than a table row.
Some of what the forms above collect is heavier than a name and an email address. Each of these three is written out in full, because a person deciding whether to type it deserves to know where it lands.
Written 28 August 2026 · rewritten whenever one of these forms changes
Three heavier intakes · the rest of the table is names, addresses and answers to questions
01
What you need in order to use the festival
The access request on the festival's accessibility page asks what you need, and the honest answers to it are about health, mobility, hearing, sight and stamina. It is read by the two coordinators who arrange access and by nobody else. It goes near no mailing list, no sponsor report and no funding application, and a request never becomes a statistic with your name attached to it. The record is held until the edition it was made for is over and the arrangements have been reviewed, and it is deleted on request at any point before that. Asking for something we cannot provide gets an honest answer and a reason, and the answer is deleted on the same schedule as the request.
02
A volunteer under eighteen
The volunteer form takes an age band, and the first band is 14 to 17. It exists because three of the nine roles need a police check that the police will not issue to a minor, so the band decides where a person can be placed. A volunteer under eighteen is placed only after a guardian has given written consent, and that consent is asked for before a first shift is confirmed rather than after. A guardian may ask to see and to delete everything held about the young person, and the answer goes to the guardian.
03
An emergency contact, who never came to this site
The volunteer form asks for the name and the telephone number of somebody to call if you are hurt on site. That person has given us nothing and agreed to nothing, so the duty sits with the volunteer who writes the name in and with us. Tell the person before you write them down. The contact is held with the two coordinators who run the day, it is used for one thing, it is never written to, never added to any list, and it goes when the edition it belongs to is over. Ask, and it is deleted the same week, by you or by the contact themselves.
How long each thing stays.
A retention period is a promise about the future, so these are written as the rule we hold ourselves to and are checked at each edition of the festival.
Retention · reviewed after every edition
| What | Held until |
|---|---|
| A mailing-list entry | You unsubscribe. The record of the consent itself — the lists, the wording and the date — is kept for three years after that, because Canadian anti-spam law puts the burden of proving a consent on the sender and allows a complaint to be brought within three years |
| A message to the team | The conversation is finished, then as the record of what was decided |
| An application that was accepted | The edition it belongs to is over, and the participant record for the following year is settled with you |
| An application that was declined or withdrawn | The end of that intake cycle, unless you ask us to keep it for the next one |
| A marketplace listing and its shopfront | The shopfront closes, then a short rolling backup window |
| A complaint and its outcome | The decision stands as the record of why a listing came down |
| An access request for the festival | The edition it was made for is over and the arrangements have been reviewed. Deleted sooner on one message |
| An emergency contact | The edition the volunteer worked at is over. Deleted sooner on one message, from the volunteer or from the contact |
| The record of a volunteer under eighteen, and the guardian's consent | The edition is over. A guardian may ask for all of it to go at any point before that |
| A barrier report about this website | The barrier is fixed and the fix has been checked, then as the record of what was reported and what we did |
| Anything in a rolling backup | The backup turns over. Deleting a live record does not reach into a backup, and this page says so rather than pretending otherwise |
Who else sees it.
A short list, and it stays short. Every name here is a supplier doing a job the site needs; each one is named so you can read their terms yourself.
Suppliers · named, and replaced on this page the day one changes
01
The people organising the festival
The coordinator handling your intake, and whoever they need to hand it to inside the team. Applications from communities and vendors are read by the people building that part of the festival.
02
The company hosting this site
Vercel serves these pages and runs the two small programmes behind the forms. What a form sends passes through them and is stored on a machine of ours — a database this organisation runs, on a server it rents in its own name, reached over an encrypted connection with a key held here. Vercel processes what passes through on our instructions and for nothing else.
03
The channels that carry an application to a person
Three are built and each one is switched on by its own setting, so this row names them before they run rather than after. Resend would send the letters — the acknowledgement to you and the copy to the coordinator's mailbox. Telegram would carry the office line: one message saying an application arrived, with the name and the way to reach you in it. A webhook into our own systems is available and unused. On 29 August 2026 none of the three is configured: an application is written to the private storage described above and read there. The day one is switched on, its name, its country and a link to its terms stand in this row before the first message leaves.
04
Nobody else, and no sponsor
The list is never sold, never rented and never handed to a partner. A sponsor gets a count and a report about the festival, and never a name or an address.
05
The police, where the law compels it
A lawful order gets what it asks for and no more, and we tell you it happened unless we are ordered not to.
Getting it out, or getting it gone.
One address handles all of it: privacy@capitalcultures.com. It reaches the person who answers for privacy in this organisation, who reads the message, does the work, and writes back naming exactly what happened.
Answered by a person · within thirty days, and usually the same week
- A copy of what we hold. Ask, and you get everything with your name on it in a form you can read.
- A correction. Tell us what is wrong and it is fixed, including in whatever was sent onward.
- Deletion. Your records go. The reply names what went and what a backup still holds until it rolls over.
- Withdrawing a consent. Every letter carries one-click unsubscribe. Withdrawing one list leaves the others alone, and asking us by email works just as well.
- An answer about a decision. Ask why a listing came down or an application was declined, and you get the reason in writing.
- A complaint that goes over our heads. If our answer does not satisfy you, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada takes complaints about organisations directly.
Do you use cookies?
The site sets nothing for advertising and carries no third-party tracker. Your browser remembers a language preference locally so the site stops asking, and that stays on your machine.
Can I subscribe without giving a name?
Yes. The mailing list asks for an email address and the lists you want. A name is never required to hear from us.
Does an application put me on the mailing list?
No. An application is used for the application. Every intake form carries a separate tick if you also want letters, and it is not ticked for you.
My child wants to volunteer. What changes?
The volunteer form is open today and its first age band is 14 to 17, so a person of that age can sign up now. Three of the nine roles need a police check that the police will not issue to a minor, and the age band is what keeps a young volunteer out of those. Written consent from a guardian is asked for before a first shift is confirmed. A guardian can ask us at any time for everything we hold about the young person, or to delete it, and the answer goes to the guardian.
Somebody put me down as their emergency contact. What do you have?
Your name and a telephone number, written in by the volunteer who named you. It sits with the two coordinators who run the festival day, it is used to call you if that person is hurt on site, and it goes nowhere else — no list, no letter, no report. Write to the privacy address and it is deleted the same week, and you need no permission from the volunteer to ask.
Is there a French version of this notice?
The French mirror of the whole site is in preparation, and this notice is part of it. Until it publishes, a question in French to the address above is answered in French.
Who is the organisation behind this?
The team and the legal footing are set out on the team page, which also carries the incorporation details as they are settled. A privacy request reaches the same people either way.
You have my address and no corporation exists yet. Who exactly will write to me?
Canadian anti-spam law ties a consent to the sender who was named when it was given, and it asks every commercial message to carry the sender's postal address. Capital Cultures has neither a filed corporation nor an office address today, so the first letter waits: no letter goes out before the corporation is registered and has a registered office to print. When the letters start, each one carries the legal name of the corporation, its Ontario corporation number and that address in the footer, and any subscriber who reads it and decides the sender is not who they signed up for can leave in one click. The same rule is why the mailing list of the festival this team runs in Lanark County is invited to subscribe here rather than carried across.
Legal · three pages and a map
The rest of the legal shelf.
Ask us anything about this.
A privacy question gets a straight answer from a person, in whatever detail you want.