Joy of Living

The Joy of Living Campaign

The Joy of Living is a campaign to raise £15 million to fund five new pioneering Maggie's Centres at major cancer hospitals around the UK.

Where are the centres?

Maggie's Oxford: at Churchill Hospital, Oxford, designed by Wilkinson Eyre

Maggie's Cotswolds: at Cheltenham General Hospital, designed by Sir Richard MacCormac of MacCormac Jamieson & Pritchard

Maggie's South West Wales: at Singleton Hospital, Swansea, designed by the late Kisho Kurokawa of Kisho Kurokawa Architects & Associates

Maggie's Nottingham: at City Hospital, Nottingham, designed by Piers Gough of CZWG

Maggie's North East: at Freeman Hospital, Newcastle, designed by Farshid Moussavi and Alejandro Zaera Polo of Foreign Office Architects

What will the centres offer?

Drop in and pre-booked psychological support, relaxation and stress management, nutrition and benefits advice, expressive art and writing and specialist support groups.

All help, advice and support is free of charge.

Complement existing local services guiding people to the best resources.

Up to 5,000 visits per year from people who are affected by cancer.  In time this will build to 20,000 visits every year.

Why £15 million?

Typically building and starting up each centre will cost £3 million:

£1.9m to build

£1.1m to set up and run for two years

Where will the money go?

Building, landscaping and furnishing the five centres

Providing an interim service (including staffing and an interim centre)

Running each new centre for two years (gives local fundraising teams time to gather momentum to fund their own Maggie's)

Essential infrastructure to enable Maggie's to meet this challenge

National Campaign Board

Sarah Brown (Maggie's Patron) is the head of our National campaign Board.

The National Campaign Board is responsible for overseeing the success of the campaign. 

Find out more about our Campaign Board members.

We are also setting up local campaign boards in each area so that committed local teams can share the responsibility and rewards of reaching our goal.

Joy of Living Supporters

Kylie Minogue, a breast cancer survivor, has recorded a message for Maggie's encouraging support of the Joy of Living campaign.  You can view it by clicking play on the video on the right of this page.

Sam Taylor Wood, a Maggie's  Patron, is a supporter of the Joy of Living Campaign and a survivor of colon and breast cancer.  Most recently she has put together a photography exhibition of cancer patients who have been helped by Maggie's Centres.

How you can help

The services we provide are now recognised as a vital component of cancer care in the UK.  Nearly all our funding comes from voluntary donations.

The Joy of Living is therefore dependent on the generous support of individuals, the business community and grant-making trusts.  Find out more

If you would like to make a gift to Maggie's, please make your gift worth more by filling in this gift aid form.

Contact us

If you would like to speak to us about the Joy of Living campaign please e-mail Helen on helene@maggiescentres.org or telephone 0207 3863 520.