Making Room for Childhood

Walker Beery was seven when he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer.

During treatment, another patient gave him a teddy bear. That small act of kindness moved him so deeply that it inspired a desire to help other children going through the same experience. Together with his family, he helped establish Kids Join the Fight, supporting pediatric cancer research and care.

Walker died in 2021 but his ambition to bring more joy into other children’s hospital stays continued.

That ambition is becoming Walker’s Imaginarium: a 15,000-square-foot enrichment center at Manning Family Children’s Hospital in New Orleans, bringing play, music, movement and discovery into the hospital experience. Solomon Group is helping bring it to life alongside the hospital, Kids Join the Fight, architects EskewDumezRipple and exhibit designers Gyroscope.

For those of us who spend our time thinking about experiences, it raises a question that deserves more attention:

What can our industry contribute when the experience we are changing is a child’s time in hospital?

The economics make this difficult

American healthcare is under enormous pressure.

According to the American Hospital Association, hospital expenses increased 7.5% in 2025, more than twice the rate of growth in hospital prices. Drug expenses rose 13.6%. Workforce costs increased 5.6%, with people accounting for roughly 60% of hospital spending.

Add administrative complexity, reimbursement pressures and the obligation to maintain essential services around the clock, and the constraints become clear. Hospital leaders face difficult choices about where the next dollar goes.

In that environment, it is easy to see how a space for play and discovery could struggle to compete for funding. There are beds to staff. Equipment to replace. Clinical services to sustain. Lots of competing priorities.

But consider what that calculation looks like from a child’s perspective.

Their school, friends and routines may have disappeared overnight. Adults decide when they wake, where they go and what happens to their body. Parents are exhausted. Siblings are worried. The days can become a succession of procedures and waiting.

The hospital has to organize itself around delivering treatment. The child still has to live there.

That is the tension Walker’s Imaginarium addresses.

There is science behind taking experience seriously

The growing field of neuroarts gives this conversation a stronger foundation.

At Johns Hopkins, the International Arts + Mind Lab brings together brain scientists and practitioners in the arts, architecture, design and creative arts therapies. Led by Susan Magsamen, the lab connects research with practical applications in health, wellbeing and learning.

For our industry, that is a meaningful connection. We spend considerable effort understanding how environments hold attention, invite participation and make people feel something. Healthcare asks what those capabilities might contribute in a very different setting.

Research on pediatric play offers one answer. A 2023 systematic review covering 29 randomized controlled trials found high-certainty evidence that play interventions reduced pain, and moderate-certainty evidence that play and music interventions reduced anxiety. This give us a serious reason to consider how play, creativity and the surrounding environment can support care.

A child who has something absorbing to do, a way to express themselves or a reason to participate is experiencing the hospital differently. That difference deserves a place in the brief.

Designing for the child who is actually there

Walker’s brings together experiences rooted in Louisiana: a Funky Forest, music and dance, an airboat adventure, mini golf and a Mardi Gras float. The intention is to give children and families a world they can explore together within the hospital.

The design challenge goes well beyond creating an appealing collection of activities.

How does a child with limited mobility participate? What works for someone who is visually impaired? Where can an exhausted child watch quietly while a sibling burns off energy? Can a therapist use an activity to encourage movement?

One decision in our work illustrates the point. An interactive media element that would not adequately serve visually impaired guests was replaced with sculpted hills in the soft-play area. That created a shared physical environment with opportunities for exploration, play and therapy.

These decisions require us to think carefully about what participation means. Sometimes it means performing on a stage. Sometimes it means initiating a small action independently. Sometimes it means watching until you feel ready.

Choice matters here. A child may have very little control over treatment, but they can still choose an activity, invite a parent to join or decide they have had enough.

The same applies to families. A hospital stay affects everyone, and a shared experience can give parents and siblings something to do together beyond discussing the next medical update. For a little while, the family gets to have an ordinary moment.

The donor opportunity

This is also where the funding conversation becomes interesting.

Walker’s Imaginarium is being made possible entirely through philanthropy. At groundbreaking, the hospital described it as a $16 million project supported by families, foundations, businesses and other donors.

That provides a concrete example of how a community can fund something a hospital might struggle to deliver through its operating budget.

It also suggests an opportunity for hospital foundations.

Experiences offer a tangible way to explain what a gift makes possible. A prospective donor can understand the value of helping a child play with their sibling, discover music or find something to look forward to during a long admission. They can picture the benefit.

That emotional clarity can also connect with a donor’s own interests. Someone passionate about music might support a performance and recording environment. A conservation-minded family might help create a world of nature and discovery. A donor fascinated by space could support an exploration experience.

The creative opportunity is considerable, especially when donor interests connect with local culture and the hospital’s actual needs.

New Orleans has its own stories, sounds and traditions. A hospital in another community would have a different foundation to build on. The philosophy can travel while each experience develops its own identity.

For donors, that creates an opportunity to contribute something personal and distinctive. For hospitals, it can open conversations with supporters who may never have considered funding patient experience.

The commitment also needs to extend beyond construction.

Programming, staffing, cleaning, maintenance and content renewal determine whether the experience continues to serve children. Funding those needs should be part of the original proposition. So should evaluation: learning who uses the space, who encounters barriers and what children, families and care teams find valuable.

A wider role for the experience industry

Much of our industry’s work centers on helping people choose where to spend their time and money.

Healthcare gives those same capabilities another purpose. Here, people often have little choice about being in the building. Our contribution is to help make some of that time more manageable, engaging and human.

That takes close collaboration with clinicians, therapists, child-life specialists, families and hospital operators. Their needs have to shape the experience from the beginning.

The financial pressures facing healthcare make this work harder to fund. They also strengthen the case for bringing hospitals, philanthropy and experienced creative teams together.

Walker wanted other children to have more moments of joy during treatment.

His Imaginarium gives that ambition a physical home. It should also encourage the rest of us to think more seriously about where our skills can make a difference.

Childhood continues during a hospital stay. We can help make room for it.

Image credit Manning Family Children’s & EskewDumezRipple

Daniel Hettwer

Chief Strategy Officer, Solomon Group