Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

1.1 Acorn Aspirations Ltd, trading as Teens in AI, is registered in England under company number 09349572 and whose registered office is at 50 Woodgate, Leicester, England, LE3 5GF, United Kingdom (“Teens in AI”, “we”, “us” or “our” in this policy).

1.2 We run hackathons, bootcamps, incubators, and accelerators, in which young people learn to identify problems in their communities and solve them using artificial intelligence and data science. We also provide AI Adventures, our online self-paced courses, designed to teach foundational and advanced skills in artificial intelligence and related fields.

1.3 Together these offerings are referred to as our “Services”. This Privacy Policy explains how we process personal data relating to all of our Services, including those delivered via third-party platforms such as Thinkific (see clause 6).

1.4 Teens in AI is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This policy explains the basis on which personal information we collect from you will be processed by us. Where we decide the purpose or means for which Personal Data you supply through these Services is processed, we are the “data controller” for the purposes of the GDPR and UK-GDPR.

1.5 This policy explains the following:

What information Teens in AI may collect about you;
How Teens in AI will use information we collect about you;
Whether Teens in AI will disclose your details to anyone else; and
Your choices and rights regarding the personal information you have provided to us.

1.6 Our online services contain hyperlinks to websites owned and operated by third parties. These third-party websites may have their own privacy policies and we recommend you review them. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the privacy practices of such third parties and your use of them is at your own risk.

1.7 By participating in Teens in AI programmes, including AI Adventures via the ‘Thinkific’ platform, you agree to the practices described in this Privacy Policy.

2. Information We Collect

2.1 We collect and process the following information which may include your Personal Data.

2.2 Information provided by you when using our Services

We collect and process personal data that you provide in the following situations:

Setting up an account and/or profile
Enrolling on Thinkific (for AI Adventures courses)
Signing up for events
Signing up for speaking opportunities
Attending our events
Using our Services
Signing up to our newsletter
Contacting us with enquiries

2.3 Such information may include:

Contact data: including your full name, email address, phone number, how you heard about us;
Student Information: including full name, date of birth, school, gender, student sign out options, student medical issues, student educational needs, emergency contact name and number;
Transaction data: where you attend an event, or access a paid-for content or course, we will keep information related to your purchases such as billing address, order numbers, payment method (see the section on Payment Information below); Payments are handled by third-party processors such as Stripe/PayPal; Teens in AI does not store card details.
Your enquires and feedback: if you contact us about our Services, we may keep the content of such enquiry. You are under no obligation to provide us with any details, but if you don’t provide all relevant information, we may not be able to help;
Photos: We may take these at our in-person or online events, provided we have obtained the prior parent/guardian consent of those being photographed.
AI Adventures enrolment: name, email address, login details.
AI Adventures course activity: progress, course feedback, quiz results, certificates achieved.

2.4 Information may be collected directly from you or via third-party platforms such as Thinkific (see clause 6), which hosts our AI Adventures courses and manages course-related data.

3. How We Use Your Information

Providing the Services

3.1 We may use and retain your personal data where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you, such as to:

register you as a user of our Services; and
deliver our Services to you.

3.2 We may also use and retain the personal data you provide to us when requesting our Services, to pursue our legitimate interest of providing our Services to you, such as to:

respond to your enquiries and communicate with you;
contact you about participating at our events;
analyse and improve our Services such as to optimise logistics and future event offerings;
provide you with information and updates about the Services we offer; and

ensure legal and regulatory compliance.

4. Cookies and Tracking

4.1 We use cookies, web beacons, and similar technologies to:

Enhance your website experience.
Analyse usage patterns and user behaviour.
Personalise content and communications.

4.2 You may manage cookies via your browser settings. Disabling cookies may affect certain website and Thinkific-hosted course functionality.

5. Data Origin, Sharing and Disclosure

We may share your information with:

Thinkific, to manage course enrolments, access, and support. Thinkific collects, processes, and stores student data on our behalf. (See clause 6)
Service providers, partners, and contractors who assist in delivering our programmes.
Legal authorities, if required by law, or to protect the rights, safety, or property of Teens in AI, our users, or others.
We do not sell your personal information.
We do not and will never share, disclose, sell, rent, or otherwise provide Personal Information to other companies for the marketing of their own products or services.
We do not show external advertisements in any of our programmes, including AI Adventures online, self-paced courses.
Our programmes, including AI Adventures online, self-paced courses, do not utilise AI in either development or delivery.

6. Teens in AI’s AI Adventures Online, Self-Paced Courses hosted on third-party platform ‘Thinkific’

6.1 Thinkific Labs Inc. is a Canadian company, which hosts and manages student data for Teens in AI, including:

Course enrollment and login information; and
Course progress, quiz results, and activity data.

Data Protection

6.2 Thinkific uses security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. Procedures have been put into place to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

6.3 Teens in AI ensures that our use of Thinkific complies with applicable data protection laws, including GDPR and UK-GDPR. Thinkific’s Privacy Policy is extensive and meets Teens in AI’s rigorous protection and safe-guarding standards: You can view Thinkific’s Privacy Policy here.

Child safeguarding

6.4 Our AI Adventures programme does not allow interactions between users and users cannot create their own content.

6.5 Our AI Adventures programme does not use AI to generate content.

7. Data Retention

7.1 We retain your personal information only as long as necessary for the purposes described above or as required by law.

7.2 Data related to completed courses or programmes may be anonymised for reporting and evaluation purposes.

8. Your Rights

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

Access your personal data
Correct or update your data
Request deletion of your data
Withdraw consent for specific processing
Object to processing or request restrictions

9. Children

9.1 Due to the nature of our services, we do collect and use data relating to children in order to provide our Service and let them take part in our events. We fully appreciate that children need particular protection when their personal data is collected and processed because they may be less aware of the risks involved. As such, we only use their data for the limited purposes of providing our Services and have safeguarding policies in place for our personnel, events partners and speakers.

9.2 If a parent or guardian becomes aware that his or her child has provided us with information without their consent, he or she should immediately contact us at hi@teensinai.com. We will delete such information from our files within a reasonable time.

9.3 We require verifiable consent from a parent or legal guardian before collecting personal data from children under the age of 13 in the UK (or under the applicable age under local laws in the EEA). We verify parental consent via online forms or written consent obtained at registration. If you believe we have collected data from a child without your appropriate consent, please contact us and we will take immediate steps to delete the data.

To exercise these rights, contact us at hi@teensinai.com.

10. Child Safety and Prevention of Harassment & Fraud

10.1 We may process your information for the legitimate interests of ensuring that use of our Services is lawful and non-fraudulent, does not disrupt the operation of our Services, does not harass or bully our personnel or other individuals, and to enforce our legal rights and comply with our legal obligations, including compliance with anti-money laundering regulations (if and where applicable).

10.2 Where we suspect unacceptable activities, we may investigate and keep a record of such investigation and its conclusion. Where such an investigation concludes in a ban from our Services, we will keep details of such a ban to ensure that it can be enforced.

10.3 We process information for the legitimate interest of complying with HMRC requirements by retaining records of customer purchases and transactions.

10.4 Where we reasonably believe that you are or may be in breach of any of the applicable laws, we may use your personal information to inform relevant third parties, your email/internet provider or law enforcement agencies about the content.

10.5 Our AI Adventures online, self-paced courses programme does not allow interactions between users and users cannot create their own content.

10.6 Our programmes, including AI Adventures online, self-paced courses programme, do not use AI to generate content.

11. Data Security

11.1 We take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect your personal data from unauthorised access, loss, or misuse.

11.2 Thinkific (see clause 6) also maintains security measures to protect data hosted on their platform.

12. Our Legal Basis for using Personal Data

12.1 We process the information listed above:

to perform our contract with you;
to enable us to comply with our legal obligations;
to pursue legitimate interests of our own or of third parties to operate our business, provided that the resulting impact on your interests and fundamental rights does not override those interests; and/or
based on your consent.

12.2 The purposes for which we will process your personal data are set out in clause 4. Sometimes the legal basis for processing will overlap and there may be several that support our processing of your personal data.

13. How we use Special Categories of Data

13.1 “Special categories” of personal data such as (without limitation) data concerning health, racial or ethnic origin, religious or philosophical belief, are granted higher levels of protection by data protection laws.

13.2 Teens in AI may use information about your physical or mental health or disability status where necessary to ensure your health and safety at our events and to provide appropriate adjustments. We will only process this type of information where we have a lawful basis to do so, such as where it is necessary to protect your vital interests or where you have provided your explicit consent. We do not anticipate processing other special categories of personal data in the usual course of our operations.

13.3 Where you have made special category data manifestly public – for example, by featuring in publicly available videos or materials that may incidentally reveal information such as health or ethnic background – we may process this information where it is relevant to our Services and we have a lawful basis under data protection law (such as Article 9(2)(e) UK GDPR). We will not actively infer, profile, or create new special category data from such materials.

14. International Data Transfers

14.1 Teens in AI is a UK organisation and we use Google Cloud services for the protection and storage of our data. Google replicates Customer Data between multiple geographically dispersed data centres. Google also logically isolates the Customer’s data. Our data is stored in data centres listed here. The information that we collect from you will be stored on these servers.

14.2 Where we transfer your data outside of the UK and/or EEA, there are agreements in place to ensure that personal data is processed using appropriate safeguards that meet the requirements of data protection laws. Such appropriate safeguards may include standard data protection clauses adopted by a data protection regulator and approved by the European Commission, such as the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses.

14.3 If you would like to find out more about these safeguards or if you have any other queries or comments in relation to this Policy, please let us know by emailing us at hi@teensinai.com.

15. Policy Updates

This Privacy Policy may be updated periodically. The effective date at the top indicates when the policy was last revised.

16. Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, or how we handle your data, please contact: hi@teensinai.com

Last updated: 14 July 2025