Industry group Together For Cinema has been putting smiles on faces of patients and families staying in children’s hospices across the U.K. for years now, and founder Ian Morrish recently shared more happy news with everyone who makes the organization possible. As of February 27, 2023, Together For Cinema has officially become a certified Community Interest Company (CIC), he posted in an update on Linkedin.

Morrish has been posting in ongoing series of videos explaining what the group does and how it goes about it, and his latest video included the CIC news.

“Well this is an exciting video, great development for us in that we have just received this,” he says, holding the framed certificate. “Basically a CIC is a company structure that comes under the guidance of the registrar of the company’s house. So not a registered charity – that proved very challenging and very complex for the way that we trade, and we trade very simply, we get donations in and we donate out to a good cause.”

Becoming a CIC gives Together For Cinema greater robustness and credibility and will help to secure its future and its ability to continue to deliver cinema rooms to good causes, according to the group. Morrish says the CIC was advised as the route to go for Together For Cinema and after going through the process and waiting period, Morrish was ready to share the news on social media.

The Together For Cinema formalization also sees the appointment of four directors: Ian; Melanie Malcolm, a CEDIA Board member and co-founder of UK-based Bespoke Home Cinemas; Cadaema Consulting Services’ David Parrett; and Chris Pinder from HDANYWHERE and OneAV. Each has the responsibility to protect and cradle the business, the main drive being to ensure that the good work continues, according to Morrish. 

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“Hats off to everyone who made this happen,” he enthuses. “This started in 2009 with me working in my spare time while I was at ISE [working for Integrated Systems Europe] to make a few things happen and we installed a few cinema rooms. By 2020 we hit on 25; in 2021 we started securing funding to help the operation develop and it became very apparent that the industry were behind us and really joined, as the saying Together For Cinema. I think we knew very quickly that we had a proper thing to develop.”

Together For Cinema Maintains Ambitious Children’s Hospice Schedule for 2023

Fast-forward to 2022 and as the pandemic waned the projects continued to pick up pace – the group facilitated, with help from its participating integration firms and vendors, seven new children’s hospice theater builds and even one renovation. This year will be another busy one for Together For Cinema and its collaborating integrators and manufacturer partners.

For 2023, Together For Cinema had six installations somewhat shored up when it sent out its January update, and hoped to target one more a total of seven installations for 2023. The current installation plan is as follows:

          – Acorns Children’s Hospice, Walsall. Installer: Jooced.

          – Butterwick Children’s Hospice, Stockton-on-Tees. Installer: Your Digital Lifestyle Ltd.

          – Cherry Trees, East Clandon. Installer: Nethaus Ltd.

          – Hope House Children’s Hospices, Oswestry. Installer: Exclusive Solutions.

          – Resources for Autism, London. Installer: Smart Living Solutions.

          – The Space Centre, Preston. Installer: TBD.

          – Marie Curie Adult Hospice, Newcastle. Installer: TBD

With seven theater rooms, lots of donated AV equipment is needed to make them become a reality, so as always there’s a call out to industry suppliers, who can email Morrish at ian@ad-con.uk if they’d like to help in any way.

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