Our Creative Hub Director talks about our collaboration with Great Ormond Street Hospital for Pig Heart Boy.

Over the past few years we’ve developed a relationship with GOSH Arts, working with children at the hospital on various creative activities. As one of the largest centres for heart transplantation in the world, it felt essential that we collaborated with the children and staff there on the development of our production of Pig Heart Boy - Malorie Blackman’s story of a young boy and his pioneering heart transplant.

The team at Great Ormond Street have generously invited our creative team into the hospital to meet children and staff, to learn more about contemporary cardiology practice and the experiences children have during treatment. One of their consultant doctors has also provided medical feedback on the script, ensuring that what we represent onstage is rooted in an understanding of medical practice whilst also holding some more sci-fi elements of the story. We are incredibly fortunate to have been welcomed into their world, it enables us to ensure that our production is held with the upmost care.

To amplify the voices of children receiving medical treatment, the Unicorn’s Creative Hub has also been running workshops and bedside activities in hospital settings around the country to create a set of poems inspired by the young people’s stories and experiences. Children receiving hospital care have explored the themes of Hope, Joy and Imagination – they will see their contributions transformed into collective poems, and share their reflections and experiences with children from other parts of the UK. Poems are being written by poets including Joseph Coelho, Matilda Feyiṣayọ Ibini, Deanna Rodger, Sile Sibanda and more. Curated by Pig Heart Boy director Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu, and audio-recorded by the young people involved, the final work will be shared nationally – through tour venues, school resources and directly with children in hospitals.

You can listen At Times The World Feels, the pilot poem we created with children at GOSH here.

With special thanks to the patients, families and staff at Great Ormond Street Hospital, Sheffield Children’s Hospital and Alder Hey Children’s Hospital.