Every year, 18,000 people are diagnosed with cancer in Wales, facing tough questions, exhausting treatment and difficult emotions that can range from anxiety to loneliness and isolation. These challenges affect not only those with cancer, but their family and friends, too.
Velindre Cancer Centre in Cardiff sees around 5,000 new diagnoses a year, with a further 50,000 new outpatient appointments from people living with or after cancer within the South Wales cancer network. The largest cancer centre in the country, it provides specialist cancer services to over 1.5 million people in Cardiff, Newport and beyond.
Maggie's and Velindre Cancer Centre are working in partnership to create cancer support of the highest quality for people in South East Wales, building upon the success of Maggie's South West Wales at Singleton Hospital in Swansea.
Once established, Maggie’s South East Wales is expected to receive up to 20,000 visits a year.
Maggie's South East Wales is being designed by Dow Jones Architects, a firm with a personal connection to South East Wales, as Alun Jones is originally from Caerphilly. Dow Jones is an award-winning architect’s practice that has worked with Tate Britain, the V&A Museum, Hawksmoor’s Christchurch, Spitalfields and The Garden Museum, London.
Warm and welcoming and full of light and open space, Maggie's South East Wales will be located in a mature garden with views over the surrounding landscape, and built from the same sandstone as the nearby hills. The interior is lined with fragrant cedarwood and creates a range of spaces reflecting traditional Welsh architecture.
The building and the landscape will have an intimate relationship, with the different rooms grouped around a central courtyard and opening into woodland gardens. The gardens are designed by Cleve West and will include spaces to grow food and walk among the trees.
The Maggie’s Centre will be built alongside Velindre Cancer Centre, a peaceful place for people to drop in during and after treatment.
The kitchen table is the welcoming heart of the Centre; somewhere to meet other people, talk with our Cancer Support Specialists or simply sit quietly with a cup of tea.
Free resources about diagnosis and treatment are available in the library, while one-to-one support takes place in the smaller rooms. Large, comfortably furnished rooms are used for group meetings and workshops and a quiet room provides somewhere to go to take time away from the rest of the Centre.
A thoughtfully designed garden is carefully created to be a welcoming extension of the inside space; offering uplifting views out from the Centre and, in warmer weather, a pleasant place to sit and relax.
Read more about the Maggie's South East Wales fundraising campaign.
Sir Roger Jones - Chairman
Geraint Davies
Anita George
Richard Hayward
Camilla Swift
Geraint Talfan Davies
John Antoniazzi
Mair Davies
Warren Lewis
We would love you to be involved in bringing Maggie’s to South East Wales.
If you’d like to find out more about our work, or about supporting Maggie’s – as an individual, company, local group, trust or foundation, please get in touch:
Wendy McManus
wendy.mcmanus@maggiescentres.org
01792 200 001
