It’s hard to believe, but Bristol’s children’s hospital, next to the Bristol Royal Infirmary, is 25 years old this month.
In April 2001 the first 100 patients were moved into the brand new building from the former Victorian children’s hospital on St Michael’s Hill.
The Bristol Royal Hospital for Children serves as the specialist paediatric centre for the whole South West and South Wales region. It was also the first hospital in Europe designed wholly around children, and an important aspect of this was that art was built in from the start, with more than 20 artists, a budget of £1.3m and extensive consultation with parents, patients and staff, all paid for by various bodies including the Arts Council, the National Lottery, the NHS itself and – of course! – the Wallace & Gromit Grand Appeal.
It was meant to be a welcoming place, somewhere where children (and worried parents) need not feel frightened or intimidated. But more than that, research suggested the colour schemes and artwork on walls, doors and even ceilings could help a young patient’s recovery. There were also to be creative activities for the children to help relieve the boredom that many experience in hospital.
The art was there – and is still there – including a huge sculpture right at the entrance for all to see.
“Lollypop Be-bop” is the biggest 3D sculpture in Bristol, and has long since become one of the most recognisable.
Designed by Andrew Smith, it was inaugurated on the evening of November 1 2001. Evening because patients in the hospital could press buttons to control the inside each of the rings.
Lollypop Be-bop has become, to use a well-worn word, iconic, not least because of a remarkable and bitter-sweet prank in November 2014.
A plaque was placed at the Hospital entrance saying: “Dedicated to the children of Bristol. The quidditch World Cup posts enchanted by Adou Sosseh. Have a magical day!”
It would be 18 months before it was revealed that the joke was the work of Bristol University graduate Cormac Seachoy.
Cormac Seachoy, whose plaque prank gained legendary status(Image: Bristol Post)
Mr Seachoy said that the sculpture put him in mind of the game played at Hogwarts school in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, and so in late 2014 he set up a crowdfunding appeal to friends and family.
He later said: “I thought it would be an awesome idea to somehow convey to Bristol that the sculpture is actually the Quidditch posts from the 1998 World Cup and that they have been enchanted into place as a gift from wizards to the Bristol Children’s Hospital.”
The shattering coda to this story, as many readers will know, was that not long after this Cormac Seachoy was diagnosed with neuroendocrine cancer and died at the age of 27, a year after he had arrived at dead of night to glue the plaque to the wall.