How to Move a Hospital 1: From Sciennes to Little France (according to the kids!)

Hip-hop-hup, a flit’s coming up – the Sick Kids is crossing the City. We’ll scoot by skateboard, zoom with balloons. At Little France, we’ll hang in a cocoon until… crack-crick-split… there’s a new Sick Kids!

This is the first of five posters in which patients suggest how the Victorian hospital at Sciennes will move across the south of the City and transform into a new building at Little France. The posters can also be found on the wall in the corridor between the main entrance and the stairs down to A+E.

Collated and drawn by Cate James 
This is how we set the patients' imaginations off...

The Poorly Hospital

The Hospital was getting old. Creaks echoed up from her cellars, the lifts groaned, the windows whined and her old boilers huffed and puffed.
The boys and girls inside the Hospital, the dads and mums and grans and uncles, the porters, the nurses, doctors, the cleaners, all began to hear new sounds. They thought at first it was just Aunt Jane’s tummy playing up because she’d eaten too many cucumbers again before she came visiting. Even the seagulls who flew around her towers started to look worried. The Hospital wasn’t feeling very well.
PJ Bear knew he had to do something. He stood in the car park and faced her. ‘You’ve already been here for over a hundred and twenty years. Maybe you need a change,’ said PJ Bear. ‘I’ve heard about a place called Little France. We could all go there. You’ll get better.’
France?’ the Hospital muttered. ‘Is it over the sea?’
 ‘Let’s ask someone,’ said PJ Bear. He wandered off and found a traffic warden.
 ‘Little France is only three miles that way’, she said, pointing.
The Meadows stretched out their green lawns and sighed. ‘We’re going to miss you,’ they said.
All the windows of Sciennes Primary School next door steamed up with tears.
The Hospital looked towards Little France. And then she began to move.


But HOW?
Ideas gathered during workshops at the Hospital by Linda Cracknell and Cate James

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