Each Saturday at around 1.30pm, eight individuals quietly slip into a side room at the Ricardo Gutiérrez Hospital for Children, Palermo. After some time, a group of lively, loud and colourful clowns emerge, armed with toys, bubble machines and musical instruments. Their mission? To bring smiles and fun to the young patients in the hospital.

Hospisonrisas was created four years ago, and the group has been steadily growing since, with volunteers from all sorts of professions and different ages. Its founder, Valeria Andrusiewicz, was working with another group of clowns that visited hospitals, but along with some other members created their own group.

Volunteers with Hospi Sonrisas entertaining young patients. (Photo: Patricio Guillamon)

One of her most important beliefs is that young patients should not lose their childhood during the ordeal that they go through in hospital, especially for those who are long-term patients.

“When a child becomes a patient, everybody – the doctors, the nurses, and even their family – looks at them as a patient, not as children,” says Andrusiewicz. “Everything becomes focused on their illness, on the fact that they are sick.”

Hospi Sonrisas is partially about entertaining and distracting the youngsters from their illnesses, but more importantly, it is about getting them to communicate and express themselves like children again, with a strong focus on a use of games that encourage them to develop.

Andrusiewicz notes that in an environment where the children do not have much control over what they do, the group also aims to give them some freedom. The clowns always ask the children if they can enter, and if they can perform. “This gives them a unique possibility in the hospital,” she says. “The child is definitely always surprised by this.”

Forming Strong Relationships

The clowns work with patients in the Nefrology, Neurology, Urology and Dialysis wards. They meet the ward nurse who gives them a list of the current patients, allowing them to know enough about a patient before entering, but not so much as to inhibit improvisation. They each write down the names and ages of the children, as well as why they are in the hospital, before splitting up into twos and threes to visit the rooms.

On this particular Saturday I follow two clowns, whose alias names are Azulina and Victoriosa, to a single room. The patient is a young girl, around three years old, with tubes and wires running through various parts of her body. Unlike the other children, who laugh and light up at the sight of the group, she seems less responsive and her father, sitting beside her, notes that she does not want to move today. At such a young age, she seems painfully aware of her own condition.

Azulina asks if she would like to hear a nursery rhyme, and the two clowns begin to sing. After a while, the child begins to move her head to the song, to the delight of her father and grandmother. Although she still looks nervous, when the song ends, Azulina asks if she would like to hear another one. With a barely inaudible “Yes” it is clear that the clowns got through to her a lot more than she is willing to let on.

Creating strong relationships through songs, smiles and balloon animals. (Photo: Patricio Guillamon)

Although from her timid reaction you wouldn’t know, the group has a longstanding relationship with this patient, as they do with most children in the hospital. The group aims to create strong relationships with the patients, so that their work is never just a one time affair, hoping instead to sustain the happiness they instil in the children. When they leave each room, they tell the patients that they will be back the following Saturday.

The families know the clowns by name, and they look just as delighted to see them as the children do.The girl’s grandmother, Marta, calls what the clowns do “a beautiful thing… They light up her life, she’s a very sad girl. She recognises them and she loves the songs and she really loves the games.” Her father, Diego, nods in agreement, his worried look disappearing for just a second.

Not Just for the Children

Talking to Diego and Marta, I realise Hospisonrisas isn’t only for children. The clowns provide the parents a moment of relief, a moment where their child’s illness, the wires and drips and the sterile hospital setting fade away a little. Families can laugh together and reconnect: more often than not, the parents will be watching the child’s reactions, and their smiles and happiness come from watching their children laughing.

In other rooms, the clowns play music, blow bubbles and hand out balloons to children. Among it all, I catch up with the ward nurse Emilia Ramirez as she sorts through some papers during a moment of peace. She only has positive things to tell me about what the clowns do. For her, much like for the families, the clowns are a personal aid, giving her the chance to catch a break and see an improvement in the children.

She notes how important the clowns are to the children, and how strong the relationships are. “Last Saturday, for one reason or another, the clowns couldn’t come, and the children were really asking me where they were, they missed them.” For her, the clowns allow the children, and even teenagers, to feel more at home, in what she calls their “unnatural habitat,” the hospital.

Hospi Sonrisas cheering up the patients and their families. (Photo: Patricio Guillamon)

She talks of a mother that spent six months with her child, recalling how she could see her gradually deteriorating emotionally and losing hope. “The Hospi Sonrisas formed a relationship with her, and I saw such a difference.”

But more importantly, Emilia has a deeply personal tie to the group, and has a particularly strong relationship with Azulina. Some time ago, she lost her daughter-in-law, after which the clowns performed to her personally. “I closed the door so that people wouldn’t think I was crazy, but they made a difference, they made me feel very positive.”

A True Difference

In the end, understanding the importance of the Hospisonrisas doesn’t come from talking to families, ward nurses or even observing the children during the show. After the clowns finish for the day, the atmosphere in the hospital changes markedly. Where there was laughter and noise before, the wards become disconcertingly quiet; the sound of children’s laughter has subsided, they lie once again watching the television. While they don’t necessarily look subdued, their solemn parents are a stark contrast to the uplifted, smiling people they were less than an hour ago.

Without children’s laughter – an all too uncommon sound in this environment – the musical instruments and the clowns performing, the hospital feels a lot more how it normally would. It feels like a hospital.