🥳 Big news! Introducing our new Intensive Care Library Project which will support some of the most vulnerable children on intensive care and high dependency units across six of our NHS hospital partners. When a child is diagnosed with a serious illness, life can become very unsettled, scary and unfamiliar, controlled by schedules, treatment plans and prolonged hospital stays away from family and friends. Through our book libraries Spread a Smile will provide a way for children and their families to find comfort and calm through the familiar activity of reading together. 📚 You can support this brilliant new initiative by purchasing books from our friends at Pickledpepperbooks who are providing an online book list of sensitive and age-appropriate books for children of all ages and stages at discounted prices. 🌟 Find out more and purchase books by following the link in the bio. Or please do get in touch by emailing [email protected] if you are able to support us through larger quantities of books. 🙏 Thank you so much for your support. ❤️ https://lnkd.in/eemYQTPc #charitytuesday #joyofbooks #joyofreading #booksinhospital #SpreadaSmile
Spread a Smile
Hospitals and Health Care
To distract seriously ill children from the monotony of long hospital stays by spreading joy and laughter.
About us
Spread a Smile is dedicated to improving the time spent by seriously ill children in hospital. We provide entertainers for seriously ill children and teenagers who are in hospital, often for prolonged periods of time, with life limiting conditions including cancer and heart, lung and kidney-related illnesses. We take entertainers such as fairies, pirates, children’s characters, musicians, magicians, singers, face painters and poets into paediatric wards, to activity centres and to children’s parties in Great Ormond Street Hospital, University College Hospital, The Royal London Hospital, St Mary's Hospital, The Evelina, Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, King's College Hospital, The Royal Marsden and Noah's Ark Children's Hospice. Our aim is to divert their attention away from their treatment, stimulate their minds and to alleviate the boredom and monotony associated with sustained hospital stays. We also extend this work to the siblings of these children, as they are deeply affected by the illness of their sister or brother. There are potential additional benefits to our work. Guided by an advisory team of medical practitioners, we entertain thousands of children each year. There is emerging evidence to show that ‘laughter is the best medicine’ as it may help to strengthen the immune system, diminish pain and decrease levels of stress.
- Website
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https://spreadasmile.org/fundraiseforus/corporate-partners/
External link for Spread a Smile
- Industry
- Hospitals and Health Care
- Company size
- 11-50 employees
- Headquarters
- London
- Type
- Nonprofit
- Founded
- 2013
- Specialties
- Entertaining, Children in Hospital, and Children with serious illnesses
Locations
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Primary
25 Horsell Road
London, N5 1XL, GB
Employees at Spread a Smile
Updates
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😆 Our Comedy Night is BACK! 🥳 Pop Monday 4 November in your diary for our next Comedy Night at The Comedy Store, London. Our amazing Ambassador Suzi Ruffell will return with another brilliant line-up, to be announced soon! 🌟 Please make sure you’re signed up to our e-newsletter to be the first to hear when tickets go on sale 👉🔗https://lnkd.in/eVHkVFfp #MondayMotivation #ComedyNight #SpreadaSmile #laughter
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🙂 Looking for something fun and positive to do with your whole family in support of others? Then our Family Fun Day on Saturday 28 September is for YOU! Not only will you enjoy a brilliant day out full of Spread a Smile magic, entertainment, fun activities, games and more, you'll also be giving something back and helping to spread a little bit of joy to seriously ill children and their families. ❤️ Tickets are on sale now (link below), and we hope you'll join us to help make our first ever Family Fun Day a huge success. 🥳 https://ow.ly/vVrK50T4ff8 #fridayfeels #fridayfeeling #FamilyFunDay #SpreadaSmile
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🌄Following on from the success of previous residential trips to Flynnes Barn in the heart of the Cumbrian mountains, last weekend Spread a Smile accompanied a small group of young people for a very special time away. With alpaca walking, bushcraft activities, music, land rover trips and so much more, it was a brilliant weekend, filled with laughter and fun. 🏕️ As one guest said, “I'm incredibly grateful to be part of a cancer community where we share similar stories and truly understand each other. Thank you, Spread a Smile, for the unforgettable trip and for making my cancer journey happier again and again." Follow link to read more…🔗 https://lnkd.in/evs75b97 #SpreadaSmile #residentialtrip #flynnesbarn
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Take a look at the brilliant paintings our Head of Art created for Elephant Ward at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust (GOSH). 🐘 It’s so lovely to see our art initiatives making such a positive an impact for children and young people in hospital. And we love seeing the smiles of hospital teams we meet too. ❤️ A huge thank you as always to the GOSH Play Team and everyone at the hospital for making us so welcome. 🙏 Please do reach out if you would like to find out about our CSR art initiatives for your company to get creative and help brighten up wards for our hospital partners. ([email protected]) #SpreadaSmile #art #artinhospital #GOSH #artist
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🌟 Helping to make wishes come true for Jacob! 🌟 We've been supporting Jacob since we met him in hospital whilst he was receiving treatment for a brain tumour, through visits in hospital, our virtual sessions and more. We were honoured that Jacob's wish with the charity Make a Wish involved meeting up with Spread a Smile entertainers for a party in hospital. 🪄🎶 It was such a special day for us all, making us proud to think of the impact we've made for Jacob and his family. As his Mum, Donna said “Jacob’s wish was incredible! As he drifted off to sleep that night he said ‘ that was the best day of my life!’ I haven’t seen him laugh and smile like that in such a long time - what Spread a Smile does is absolutely amazing - thank you so, so much!” ❤️ Follow the link below to read more about Jacob’s wish and how Spread a Smile have been supporting him over the past few years. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/e2b8MRDr #SpreadaSmile #entertainer #magic
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🥳Exciting news! This year we’re hosting our first ever Entertainer Variety Show on Wednesday 13 November at The Bedford in Balham. This very special fundraising event will showcase the talents of Spread a Smile’s amazing entertainers including Mr Magic and Sar with the Guitar, giving you the chance to experience first-hand the joy and happiness they bring to everyone they meet. With music, magic, dance and so much more, come and join in the fun and help raise vital funds to help spread smiles when they’re needed most. 🙂 Tickets are on sale now via the🔗below! Don’t miss out! https://lnkd.in/edD5g8pE (NB: Images show some of our entertainers in action and full line up for the Variety Show will be announced soon!)
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Through virtual sessions, Spread a Smile’s entertainers are able to reach children and young people at home, providing special moments of fun and laughter. 🙂 If a child is isolating in between treatment stages, not able to go to school or spend time with friends and wider family, our virtual sessions provide a chance for connection and entertainment. They include magic, music, storytelling, arts and crafts and much more and we also run virtual group sessions so that children can meet, chat and engage with other young people. 👭💕 Thank you to this lovely young man and his Mum for sharing this clip of him enjoying a session with Spread a Smile’s Mr Magic. 🪄 If you're interested in finding out more about supporting this important area of our work, then please get in touch with our Head of Fundraising by emailing [email protected] #fridayfeeling #fridayreels #magic #entertainment #SpreadaSmile
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🥳 It was party time last week with an incredible event at the Met Lounge Fitzrovia for some of the teenagers we support and their families. 🎶40 people joined us for a delicious dinner with spectacular views of London, accompanied by amazing performances from singer Sharlette and the outstanding electric violinist Stringz.🎻 💃 Our VIP guests were on their feet dancing and singing along, with Spread a Smile entertainers on hand to add to the fun with magic, facepainting, poetry and making personalised caps, t-shirts and bags. We’d like to say a huge thank you to Nicholas Lazari and John Themis from Lazari Investments Limited for making this incredible event possible and we really look forward to doing lots more together in future. 🙏 It made us so happy that everyone left with huge smiles on their faces and lots of happy memories made. Read more via the🔗👇 https://lnkd.in/gRMR3CNj
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❤️ When a child is ill in hospital, so many day-to-day childhood experiences are lost. Spread a Smile aims to bring back some of those experiences, taking them into hospital and helping children to find fun and distraction for a little while. Our friends at the LEGO Group having been helping us do just that, recently running a Play Agent workshop for Spread a Smile entertainers to learn more about using LEGO® bricks to initiate interactive play with children in hospital. We were also delighted to welcome 10 Play Specialists from across some of our NHS hospital partners and the day was a huge success, with everyone coming away with so many brilliant ideas for creating special moments of fun for the children and young people we meet. Thank you as always to the LEGO Group for their brilliant support. 🫶🏻 #spreadasmile #lego #LEGOPlayforAll
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