Madrid/València (EFE).- The non-profit organization Payasospital, based in the Valencian Community and directed by the Valencian author, actor and director Sergio Claramunt, has been awarded the 2023 Max Social Character Award, granted by the Foundation General Society of Authors and Publishers (SGAE).
From its headquarters in the Valencian neighborhood of Benimaclet, Payasospital has more than two decades of continuous work in pediatric hospitals in the Valencian Community and wants to be a recognition of the “fabric of hospital clown associations”, the SGAE said this Friday.
The organizing committee of the XXVI Max Awards for Performing Arts, which will be held in Cádiz on April 17 at the Gran Teatro Falla, has highlighted “his excellent work” on the company’s 25th anniversary.
“Some thought that Clownspital would not last long”
“Some colleagues thought that the association would not last for many years, but I never believed it. Time has proved me right and today, more than two decades later, we continue to work and train new clowns”, commented Sergio Claramunt (València, 1963) upon learning of the distinction.
Currently, the artistic intervention team of Payasospital is made up of 24 professionals, plus ten people in management, almost 600 collaborating partners and around 40 volunteer clowns who cooperate in promotional and awareness activities in schools and specific events. .
The clowns of the association, dressed as doctors with colored gowns, distribute smiles and joy to hospitalized minors in the Valencian Community, a way of offering psychosocial support to both children and their families to try to improve their emotional well-being and physical.
The Max extend the award to similar initiatives
The Max committee extends this award to other similar initiatives that exist in other parts of Spain. “All of them form an extraordinarily beneficent fabric. It is very important ”, they highlight in a note.
Payasospital has received different recognitions: in 2001 it was declared, for example, a Public Utility Association by the Ministry of the Interior and in 2021 it obtained the 2021 Valencian Performing Arts Honor Award from the Generalitat Valenciana.
“Mine is the best job in the world: making the girls and boys who need it the most laugh in the most delicate situations, so that they discover that, despite the hard physical and emotional moment they are going through, they can still continue laughing, playing, dreaming”, concludes Claramunt.