IPPN

Published: 15 November 2018

At this time of year, many schools are preparing for their Christmas and Nativities plays. Everyone will be excited on the day of the performance, especially parents. Most parents and grandparents will come armed with mobile phones, ipads and cameras to record the entire show.

What are the implications for the school of parents recording their own and other children performing on stage?

A recording of a child, or children, is the collection and storage of data. As with the collection and storage of any data, consent is required. Parents are not required to comply with the Data Protection Act when taking photographs of their children for their own private use at an organised event. As long as the parents have been invited to the event and the subsequent pictures are intended for family or private use, there is no breach of the Act. This changes if the parents subsequently share images of other children in a public forum e.g. Facebook, website etc. The responsibility is firmly on the person who has captured the images not to share them publicly.

It would be advised that this is brought to the attention of parents in advance of the staging of the play. Some schools engage a professional videographer and make the CDs available afterwards to parents. Such activity would require the consent by the parents of all children being recorded.

Click here for more information and guidance on GDPR in your school