Privacy Policy

Introduction

Next Canvas, Inc. (“NextCanvas,” “we,” “us,” “our,” or “Company”) is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you visit our website and use our services.

Information We Collect

We may collect information about you in a variety of ways. The information we may collect on the site includes:

Personal Data: The email address you sign in with and the display name you choose. Your display name does not have to be your legal name, and an alias is permitted. We never ask for your legal name, your phone number, or your mailing address. If a moderator invites you to join as a mentor, we keep the email address the invitation was sent to, and any note written with it, until the invitation is accepted or expires.
High School Ambassador Applications: If, and only if, you apply to be a High School Ambassador, we ask for the name of your school, its city or region, and the grade you are in, along with your answers to the questions on the form. We do not ask applicants for a legal name. If your application is approved, your display name and your school's city or region appear on our Community Events page. Your school's name is never published. We keep it so that the programme stays limited to one ambassador per school, and it is visible only to the NextCanvas team reviewing applications. Nobody who does not apply is ever asked for any of this.
Profile Information: A biography, a profile photograph, a personal website address, an Instagram handle, and the disciplines you work in. Mentors may additionally provide a professional title and a mentor statement. Everything in this category is optional, is supplied by you, and is displayed publicly on your profile.
Artwork Information: Details about your submitted artwork, including titles, descriptions, images, and media types, together with the year the piece was made and the grade you were in when you made it. The year and grade are optional and may be left blank.
Community Contributions: The discussions and replies you write in the forum, including any images you attach and any tags you apply; the opportunities you post, with the organization name, location, dates, and external link you supply; comments you leave on an opportunity listing; and the pieces you mark as liked. Artwork in the gallery does not accept comments, so no written feedback is collected there. If you report content to our moderators, we collect the reason you select, any detail you write, and a record that the report came from your account.
Community Event Photographs: Photographs you submit from a NextCanvas gathering, with the date, the location, and the description you write. These photographs show real people, so a moderator reviews every submission before any of it is published.
Usage Data: We do not use analytics services or advertising trackers, we do not record which pages you visit or how long you spend on them, and we set no cookies of our own. Two things are kept in your browser's own local storage. The first is your sign-in token, which is what keeps you signed in from one visit to the next without having to request a new code; it lasts thirty days, is extended while you keep using the site, and is removed when you sign out. The second applies only to a signed-out visitor who likes something, whether a forum post or a piece of artwork: a random identifier, so that one like is not counted twice. That identifier is not a fingerprint, it says nothing about the visitor, and our servers store only a hash of it. Our servers also see your IP address in the ordinary course of serving a request, and use it to apply rate limits that keep the site from being abused.

How We Use Your Information

NextCanvas uses the information we collect in the following ways:

To sign you in and keep your session active
To process and evaluate artwork submissions
To communicate with you about your submission and NextCanvas programs
To display your artwork in the gallery on this site, and on the home page where a moderator selects it for display
To connect students with mentors
To send newsletters and updates about NextCanvas events and opportunities
To allow mentors to review submissions and moderators to enforce our community guidelines
To review High School Ambassador applications, to keep the programme to one ambassador per school, and — for approved ambassadors only — to list a display name and a city or region on our Community Events page
To improve our website and services
To comply with legal obligations

We will not use an ambassador's name or their school in fundraising, advertising, or sponsor materials. An ambassador represents NextCanvas rather than their school, and NextCanvas is not affiliated with or endorsed by any school. An ambassador may withdraw at any time, from the application page or by writing to us; withdrawing removes them from the Community Events page.

We do not sell your information, and we do not use it for advertising. You may opt out of newsletters and other marketing email at any time, either by using the unsubscribe link in the message or by writing to us at the address below. Opting out does not stop the email we have to send about your own account and your own submissions, such as your sign-in code and the outcome of a review.

Service Providers

We share information with a small number of providers who process it on our behalf and for no other purpose: a delivery service that sends the email described above, and a storage service that holds the images you upload. Where a member has pasted a link to a YouTube or Vimeo video into the forum, the player is loaded from that service when the page is viewed, and that service may set its own cookies and collect its own information about the view. That is the one place cookies reach you through this site, and only on a page where a member has posted a video.

Data Protection and Security

We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect your personal information against unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. There are no passwords on NextCanvas: you sign in with a one-time code sent to your email address, and we store only a keyed hash of that code, never the code itself. Images you upload are held in a private bucket and served through links that expire, so a copied link stops working. However, no method of transmission over the Internet or electronic storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Parental Consent

NextCanvas is committed to protecting the privacy of minors. You must be 13 or older to create an account, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. We do not ask for or store parent or guardian contact details, and the site does not currently require a parent or guardian to approve an account before it is created or before a student applies to be a High School Ambassador. This is why the ambassador programme publishes only a display name and a city or region, and never a legal name or a school: nothing that identifies where a student can be found in person is put on the site. Parents and guardians have the right to review, request deletion of, or refuse further collection of their child's personal information. To exercise any of those rights, write to us at the address below and we will act on the request.

Your Rights

Depending on your location, you may have the following rights regarding your personal information:

The right to access your personal information
The right to correct inaccurate information
The right to request deletion of your information
The right to opt-out of marketing communications
The right to data portability

You can exercise the first three yourself from the Settings page: your profile is editable at any time, and you may delete your account there. On deletion, your email address and display name are permanently removed, and the posts you have made are deleted. Written contributions you left on other members' work are retained and attributed to “Deleted user,” so that the discussions those contributions belong to remain readable. Where you would like us to act on a request directly, write to the address below.

Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, please contact us at:

Email: info@nextcanvas.org

Changes to This Policy

NextCanvas may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page and updating the “Last Updated” date below.

Last Updated: August 9, 2026