£1m appeal to build cinema for sick children

A charity has launched an appeal to build a specialist fully-accessible cinema inside Birmingham Children's Hospital.

The £1m project would see the hospital's current lecture theatre converted into a state-of-the-art cinema during evenings and weekends, while still being used for training and education during the day.

Under the plans, there would be 63 purpose-made, movie-style seats designed specially to accommodate wheelchairs, hospital beds and medical equipment.

So far, the Birmingham Children's Hospital Charity and MediCinema have raised £400,000 of their goal and have appealed for donations.

Once it is up and running, it is believed the facility will be the largest MediCinema in operation, expecting to provide around 260 screenings each year.

Alex, a father from Kidderminster in Worcestershire, has backed the plans and described them as life-changing.

His daughter has been a patient at the hospital since she was two days old - after having sepsis and a bowel issue which required surgery.

Now aged three, she is still under the hospital's care and has had a number of operations and blood transfusions, so the cinema would be a "game changer" for her and her family, her father said.

He told BBC Hereford and Worcester: "These children in hospital don't get to do these normal things, some of them won't grow up and that is the sad reality of the world we live in.

"To have normality for just 90 minutes or two hours while you're watching a film would be life-changing and gives parents that peace of mind that for those two hours they are a normal family."

Nicole Hermanns, head of Strategic Projects at Birmingham Children's Hospital Charity, added: "For siblings, it's really intimidating to be at the bedside with all the noises and the beeps going on, so this will allow families to leave the ward and have that wonderful normal experience and moments of joy.

The charity has said the cinema will also be used to bring together groups of patients with the same condition who are not currently staying in hospital to boost education and support.

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