Our Education & Audience Development Manager, Liz guest blogs for us about a very special event that took place here recently, for some very special families. 

Liz Leck
Liz Leck

There are times in your life … (and when you get to my age,  there have been a lot of chances for times in my life)  – when something wonderful happens and sometimes all you can do is just watch it unfold. And this is what happened on Saturday.

To set the scene – We have worked with Acorns Children’s Hospice before on a similar theatre day in the Summer – and we invited the same 10 families back to a special panto day here at the Hippodrome to see Aladdin.

We had a refresher training day with our Customer Service Assistants (CSAs) and volunteers with the Acorns team who explained the work of Acorns and gave us a little insight into the families who would be attending. The training is very important as this prepares our staff for the day. It can be very emotional seeing the children and their families but it is important that we don’t show this – our job is to make sure that we give them all a very joyful day to remember.

We partnered up each of the CSAs with a family. Even this process was carefully thought about. We wanted to ensure that the family and the CSA both gained as much as possible from the ‘union’.

At 11am – we had the foyer area all set up with lots of craft activities and had created a very relaxing sensory space for families who just needed to escape in our Qdos Lounge.We didn’t want to make the craft activities too onerous but we wanted them to be relevant to the show so we made Aladdin style hats and activity sheets. We also organised a succession of backstage tours, which were very popular!

One of the reasons this day is so important, is that the siblings of poorly children are often overlooked, and have to take a back seat. They can miss out on so much as often the sick child is unable to take part in activities. We create days like this to keep the families together and ensure that they do have the chance to be just that – a family.

We always include a singing activity, as this can often have a calming effect on the children and all the families sing with one voice. It can be a very uplifting moment. On Saturday we sang ‘Any Dream Will Do’, and members of the Aladdin company joined with the families. They weren’t in costume but the CSAs explained to their families who they were and showed them pictures on their programmes. I think that my favorite moment was when Marti Pellow – who had come to say hello went off and came back with a giant panda! Possibly not so good for the panda when one little girl wanted to see if it was real by punching him in the stomach!

As part of making sure the families can have some time out – we converted the Qdos lounge into a sensory room, with our bubble lamps and lighting cables and buckets of fidget toys. It did remain a very calm environment. During the interval  the CSAs made sure that their families were OK, and if they didn’t want to leave the auditorium they took them in ice creams, kindly donated by our Front of House Manager Jonathan.

At the end of the show all the families gathered outside the Qdos lounge and the Company Manager brought out most of the cast again, but this time in costume! Seeing all the children’s faces was wonderful!  So many of the Acorn’s children have little or no recognition and find it hard to communicate but one little boy, who can only Makaton sign, got very animated when he saw Lee Mead (Aladdin) and spelt out Casualty! Another little girl burst into giggles when she saw Matt Slack (Wishee Washee). Another highlight was for one little girl, a sibling, was having her photo taken between Aladdin and Princess Jasmine!

It was a privilege to be a witness to all of this and when people ask me what I get from my job – I just know the answer. It’s being part of such an amazing team with so many caring and giving people and knowing that theatre really can make a difference.

Working with Acorns is about giving families a memory and I know that at the end of Saturday – there were so many more memories created that will stay with those families for a long time.

Find out more about the work Liz, and the rest of our Creative Learning Team do here.