Terms, privacy & notices.

Competition terms and conditions.

By entering Readers of Edinburgh you agree to these terms. The competition is run by Cultural Commons CIC in partnership with Tills Bookshop ("the Promoter").

1. The competition

Readers of Edinburgh is a free open-call photography competition celebrating the private, domestic life of books in Edinburgh, held during the UK's National Year of Reading 2026.

2. Eligibility

1. Open to entrants of any age. Entrants under 18 must have the consent of a parent or guardian (see also section 4 on safeguarding).
2. Entries must be the entrant's own original photographic work.
3. Photographs must have been made in Edinburgh. You do not need to live in Edinburgh to enter.
4. Employees, trustees, directors, contractors and immediate family of the Promoter, and members of the judging panel, are not eligible to win prizes but may submit work for inclusion in the exhibition only.

3. How to enter

1. Entry is free.
2. Submit via the Google Form linked from the Submit page, or by email to photo@tillsbookshop.co.uk if you cannot use the form.
3. You may submit up to three (3) photographs in total. Each photograph must be accompanied by a written statement of 50–100 words.
4. Files must be JPEG or PNG, no larger than 10 MB each.
5. Submissions open at 00:01 on 1 June 2026 and close at 23:59 (UK time) on 30 July 2026. Late entries will not be considered.

4. Subject matter

• Private, domestic reading spaces only — home shelves, reading corners, family collections, portraits with books.
• Public libraries, bookshops, and AI-generated or AI-augmented images are not eligible and will be disqualified.
• If a photograph includes an identifiable person, you must have their permission to enter the image. For under-18s, the consent of a parent or guardian is required.

5. Rights in your work

1. You retain full copyright in all submitted photographs.
2. By entering, you grant the Promoter a non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free, worldwide licence to:
   1. reproduce, display, and share your photographs and statements on social media, the competition website, and other digital communications, in connection with the competition and the resulting exhibition;
   2. print, frame and exhibit your photographs at Tills Bookshop and at any related public showings;
   3. use your photographs in non-commercial editorial coverage of the competition.
3. You will be credited by name (or by pseudonym if requested at point of entry) wherever your work is shown.
4. Your work will not be used in any for-profit print product (books, prints for sale, merchandise) without a separate written agreement with you.
5. You may withdraw your entry and licence at any time before the announcement of winners by emailing photo@tillsbookshop.co.uk.

6. Warranties

By entering you confirm that:

• you took the photograph yourself, and it is your original work;
• you have obtained any consents needed from people who appear in the image;
• the work does not infringe any third-party rights and is not unlawful;
• no AI was used to generate or augment the image.

7. Judging

1. Entries will be judged by a panel appointed by the Promoter. Panel members will be listed on the website before the deadline.
2. Judging criteria: strength of the image and of its accompanying written statement. There are no separate categories for style, format or equipment.
3. The judges' decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.

8. Prizes

1. First prize: £100 cash. Second prize: £50 cash. Third prize: £50 Tills Bookshop voucher.
2. All three winning entries will be exhibited at Tills Bookshop, 1 Hope Park Crescent, Edinburgh EH8 9NA, for approximately three months from October 2026.
3. Prizes are non-transferable and there is no cash alternative to the bookshop voucher.
4. Winners will be notified by email by 20 September 2026. If a winner cannot be contacted within 14 days, the Promoter reserves the right to award the prize to another entrant.
5. Cash prizes (First and Second Place) will be paid by UK bank transfer within 28 days of the winner providing bank details. The Third Place Tills Bookshop voucher will be issued as a digital e-voucher by email within 14 days of the winner being confirmed.

9. Disqualification

The Promoter may disqualify any entry that breaches these terms, or any entrant who provides false information, at its sole discretion.

10. Liability

The Promoter accepts no responsibility for entries lost, delayed or damaged in transit, or for technical failures of any submission platform. Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for any other liability that cannot be excluded by law.

11. Gambling Act 2005

This is a free-entry, skill-based competition judged by an independent panel. It is not a lottery under the Gambling Act 2005.

12. Law

These terms are governed by the laws of Scotland and subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Scottish courts.

13. Changes

The Promoter may amend these terms if required for legal, regulatory or operational reasons. Material changes will be posted on this page with an updated date at the top.

Privacy notice.

This notice explains how we handle personal data when you enter Readers of Edinburgh, contact us, or visit this website. We follow the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

1. Who we are

The data controller is The Word for Forest Ltd (trading as Tills Bookshop), 1 Hope Park Crescent, Edinburgh EH8 9NA, company number SC644186. Contact for data protection matters: admin@thewordforforest.co.uk. For all other competition correspondence: photo@tillsbookshop.co.uk.

2. What we collect

From entrants

Name, email address, contact number, age (if under 18), guardian name and contact (if applicable), your photographs, and your written statements.

From correspondents

Anything you choose to include when you email us.

From visitors

Standard server logs (IP address, browser, pages visited) for security and performance.

3. Why we collect it & our lawful basis

• To run the competition — assess entries, contact entrants, award prizes, mount the exhibition. Lawful basis: performance of a contract (the competition terms) and your consent at point of entry.
• To exhibit and promote winning work — under the licence in the competition terms, with your credit. Lawful basis: consent and our legitimate interest in running a public competition.
• To respond to enquiries. Lawful basis: legitimate interest in providing information you've asked for.
• For website security and analytics. Lawful basis: legitimate interest in running a working website.

4. Who sees it

• The judging panel and the Promoter's staff and volunteers.
• Google LLC, if you submit via Google Forms (entry data and uploads are stored in Google Workspace until we download them).
• Netlify, Inc., which hosts this website and processes standard server logs.
• Nobody else. We do not sell your data and we do not share it with marketing partners.

5. International transfers

Google Workspace may transfer data outside the UK. Such transfers are covered by the UK–US Data Bridge and Google's standard contractual clauses.

6. How long we keep it

Photographs & statements

Retained indefinitely as part of the competition archive, under the licence in the competition terms. You may withdraw an entry at any time before the announcement of winners (see section 5 of the competition terms).

Entrant name

Retained alongside the images for the purpose of attribution and credit.

Contact details

Email address, phone number, age and guardian information kept until 31 December 2027, then deleted, except where we are required to keep them to honour your rights.

Correspondence

Up to 2 years from the last contact.

7. Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to:

• ask for a copy of the data we hold about you;
• ask us to correct inaccurate data;
• ask us to delete your data (subject to our legal obligations);
• object to or restrict our processing;
• withdraw consent at any time, where consent is the basis for processing;
• complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk or 0303 123 1113.

To exercise any of these rights, email admin@thewordforforest.co.uk. We aim to respond within one calendar month.

Cookies & tracking.

This website itself does not set cookies and does not run analytics or advertising trackers.

The submission process uses Google Forms, hosted by Google. When you open the form, Google will set its own cookies on your device under Google's privacy policy. We have no control over these cookies; they are governed by Google's privacy notice.

If we add analytics or other tracking in future, we will update this page and add a consent banner before they are loaded.

Safeguarding under-18s.

We welcome entries from under-18s and entries that include children, but we take a careful approach:

• Entrants under 18 must enter with the knowledge and consent of a parent or guardian. The guardian's name and contact details must be included with the entry.
• Photographs that include any identifiable child must be accompanied by the consent of that child's parent or guardian. We may ask for confirmation in writing.
• Children's full names, school names, home addresses and contact details will not be published alongside any image at any stage.
• We will not use photographs of children in any context outside the competition, exhibition, and directly related editorial coverage.
• Any concern about an image involving a child can be raised by emailing photo@tillsbookshop.co.uk and we will review and, if necessary, withdraw the image from display.
• Our designated safeguarding contact is Joshua McNamara, reachable at photo@tillsbookshop.co.uk.

Accessibility statement.

We want Readers of Edinburgh to be open to everyone, including people who use assistive technology or who would find the standard submission route difficult. This statement reflects our own informal review — the site has not yet been independently audited.

What we've checked

• The site is built with semantic HTML — headings, landmarks, links and lists — and works with keyboard navigation and modern screen readers.
• Body text on both the cream background and the dark-green prizes and footer sections meets WCAG 2.1 AA contrast (4.5:1 or better) at our standard 16–17 px body size.
• Meaningful images have descriptive alt text; we use no purely decorative images that would need to be hidden from assistive technology.
• The page language is set to English so screen readers select the right voice.
• There is an email alternative to the Google Form for anyone who cannot use it.

Where we fall short

• Some captions and italic display text are set small (around 13–14 px) and may be harder to read — browser zoom up to 200% works without breaking the layout.
• The Google Form is hosted by Google and is outside our control; we cannot guarantee its accessibility. If it does not work for you, please email your entry instead.
• The site has not been independently audited against WCAG 2.2.

Help & feedback

If you need an entry form in a different format (large print, audio, plain text by email), or if you find any part of this site hard to use, please contact photo@tillsbookshop.co.uk and we will respond within five working days.

Promoter & contact.

The competition is run jointly by:

Cultural Commons CIC

Company number SC837397.
cultural-commons.org
Email: photo@tillsbookshop.co.uk.

Tills Bookshop

1 Hope Park Crescent, Edinburgh EH8 9NA.
tillsbookshop.co.uk
Trading name of The Word for Forest Ltd, company number SC644186.

For all competition matters — entries, queries, withdrawals, data requests, accessibility, and safeguarding — please write to photo@tillsbookshop.co.uk.