As a symbol he’s dated and easily outclassed by the Kaitiaki Whānau, a new cast of cartoon characters designed to lend support to tamariki at Wellington Hospital’s new children’s health service Te Wao Nui. But Hospi the lion has put in the years, and won’t be easily dismissed.
When my daughter is admitted, everything about the hospital fills me with dread, boredom and fear. I’ve even developed a secondary disgust for the incongruous items I’ve encountered in hospitals. I remember a faded, strung-out Pink Panther toy slouching in a blood clinic; a Donald Duck print on a white wall made sinister by its proximity to a disposable glove dispenser; a plaster of Paris guard dog exemplifying not protection and fortitude but imperfection and misfortune.
Inherently disturbing to me are the Royal Doulton tiles depicting fairy tale scenes still on display at the Wellington Children’s Hospital. Not only do they carry the eerie tones of the morality tales themselves, but they imply that nothing has changed in this hospital, that whatever was good enough for children a hundred years ago will do well enough for them now.
I have always found the juxtaposition of sterile healthcare apparatus and jolly children’s entertainment deeply unsettling. Healthcare is serious business. It is acute, extreme. We are in hospital during our worst moments. Why force levity onto this?
So I should really hate Hospi, a cheery lion who has been a cheeky presence at the Wellington Hospital in various forms for a generation of children. But to me, he is a psychic complication: an extra prick of anxiety on already fraught Friday night. I don’t want to be here. I’m worried. I’m automatically suspicious of him. I’m not here for me, though, I’m here for my daughter. And she falls for him, hard.
Hospi. His name is a contraction of the word “hospital”. He is not even attempting to hide his association with the place. He exists only in relation to the sickness and pain. This should make him doubly repellent to me. But, as I’ve learned from many other examples of great 21st century art and culture, he’s not FOR me. Hospi is for the children.
Hospi is an uncomplicated hero. He is a lion and lions are brave. He can do an ollie and ride an elephant. He has no sidekick, and he has no voice. His paw prints guide visitors around the hospital. Here he is, presented in bright clear wall decals, popping his head up Kilroy-style above a set of double doors. Look! There he is again, in a racing car, a hot air balloon… pulling the night sky down outside an operating theatre. Check out this one where he’s struggling to carry a urine sample! See him here, pulling off a rad kick flip above your daughter’s bed in the children’s A&E.
The lion character was developed in soft toy form in 2008, with the wall design debuting in 2012. He is available for purchase from the gift shop, and is often given to children who have been, or need to be, especially brave.
“After her first few visits we started refusing the soft toys,” says the parent of one child who is a frequent visitor to the hospital, “But once she was old enough to be aware of everything we started accepting them again. They’re a way of marking her journey. Now she has a whole pride of them.”
As well as the toys and the wall decals, there is also a Hospi mascot who shows up to offer mute support and representation at public events, and whose design splits the difference between the familiar figure on the walls and the more generic-looking toy version. There is a visual disconnect here, but it never dips into the uncanny valley the way that, say, the early versions of Disney or Simpsons characters can. Three subtly different versions of the figure exist side by side by side in a hospital, and kids love them.
The character on the walls was designed in a week or so by someone at Weta Workshop who knew what they were doing. This is this version of Hospi that children are most likely to encounter first: a series of pictures inside a building where they don’t want to be. He lacks backstory and his character is literally two dimensional. His universe does not expand. Hospi may only have been around in this form for ten years – not even the full span of a single childhood – but he has proven himself to be consistently calming, encouraging and fun. And he has just been saved from retirement.
The new regional children’s hospital for Wellington, Te Wao Nui, is introducing a new gang of characters to help children with their time in hospital: the Kaitiaki Whānau. The “little guardians are here to help tamariki and rangatahi… to a healthy future”. There are nine of them: a true galaxy of guardians.
The kaitiaki are modelled after the flowers, sprouts and blossoms of native plants, and each has a specific area of responsibility. One of them, Kaha, appears poised to challenge Hospi for the bravery portfolio. Piko will be in charge of “wayfinding” and may render Hospi’s guiding pawprints obsolete. Tiaki, a cute little pōhutakawa blossom, is already making themselves known around the hospital, stepping up to become the comforting, welcoming face of the Te Wao Nui.
The introduction of characters specific to Aotearoa seems right, and the overhaul of the regional facility provides apposite timing. Come to think of it, was a lion ever the right creature to fill such a role? Sure, it does make a lot of sense on the surface: as well as the cross-cultural “bravery” shorthand, the lion is associated, by some, with Wellington. That association, though, comes via England, which has about as many lions in the wild as Newtown does. The lion’s majesty and nobility has been co-opted, and now symbolises those very traits in the heraldry of the empire that colonised this country.
Maybe these concerns were in the air earlier this year, when word around the wards was that Hospi was to be “retired”. It appeared there was no way to have the native botanical guardians and the imported apex predator share the same spaces. Hospi was old, and he was outnumbered. The stage was set for a full scale changing of the guardians.
I’m happy to report that, according to the Wellington Hospitals Foundation, Hospi will be “working with his new friends Tiaki, Kowhai, Piko and all the other kaitiaki/guardians of the new Te Wao Nui Child Health Service”. Things are changing at the hospital, but Hospi is not being left behind.
It is unclear exactly what Hospi’s new role will look like, but it appears he has built up so much goodwill among children, caregivers and staff that he will live on in some form when Te Wao Nui opens in October. He has worked hard, and he deserves to take it a little easier. Hospi will no longer be expected to carry the burden of care for the capital’s children on his own. No longer does this lion, the King of Symbols, have to mean everything to every child. Hospi will have a whole new whānau to help him. I’m glad that they are already friends.