2027 Charity Auction

2026 Charity Total – £4045
2025 Charity Total – £3855
2024 Charity Total – £2805

Those of you who have joined us for Festival of Friendship in previous years will know we have a longstanding relationship with Sophie’s Legacy and we are proud to be supporting them once again with our 2027 event.

Many of us know families whose children have required hospital care and for hundreds of families, Sophie’s Legacy has made a real difference to improve standards on Children’s Wards throughout the UK for both the children staying there and their families.

Sophie’s Legacy is a locally founded charity and their mission is one we fully embrace and support – we are proud to continue supporting the incredible work that they do.

Whilst their initial reach was the local area, in recent years the charity has expanded over several counties as well as campaigning for these improvements on a national level.

So please, donate your items to our charity auction or bid and get involved on the day!

Want to donate something? Just bring it to our auction table (there will be signs and will be marked on the map in the con book!) If you can’t make it to the con but still want to contribute, drop us a line and we’ll sort it out. We can potentially handle physical items (mail them to us beforehand), commission artwork, or digital goodies.

Registering items is super easy! You can submit your auction items online before the event – then just drop them off on the day. We’ll have QR codes around the convention linking to the registration site, plus a staff member at the auction desk to help anyone who prefers to register in person. (The 2027 website is getting its final touches right now, but we’ll share the link here and on social media as soon as it’s ready!)

Every pound raised goes directly to Sophie’s Legacy so let’s make every item count!

 In memory of a remarkable young girl who touched so many lives

Sophie’s Legacy was created in memorial of Sophie Fairall and the legacy of change she wanted to create.

Sophie had just turned 9 when she was diagnosed with a rare form of childhood cancer called Rhabdomyosarcoma in September 2020. During her treatment, she endured 9 rounds of intense chemotherapy and 7 weeks of radiotherapy.

Sophie never managed to get into remission and in June 2021, after only eight weeks on a programme of maintenance chemotherapy, she relapsed. With no treatment options left Sophie passed away aged 10, in September 2021, just 1 year after her diagnosis.

During her treatment, Sophie set out writing her bucket list and was able to achieve some incredible experiences. She also wanted to change a number of things nationally and wrote these on her bucket list for her mother to achieve in her memory.

Her Legacy

Sophie wanted the following things changed and this will be her legacy in memory of a remarkable young girl who touched so many lives:

  • ​Play specialist 7 days a week in hospitals
  • Improvements to food for children in hospital
  • For parents to be fed when staying with their child
  • For GP’s, nurses and health professionals to be trained in childhood cancer
  • To increase the funds (currently 3%) in childhood cancer research

Hospitals Served by Sophie’s Legacy

Sophie’s Legacy charity currently provides snack and toiletry boxes to children’s ward and neonatal wards in 10 hospitals across the South of England. This includes hospitals in Southampton, Portsmouth, Sutton, Chichester, Guildford, Basingstoke, Winchester, Salisbury, The Isle of Wight and Dorset.

You can read more about Sophie’s story and her Legacy at https://www.sophieslegacy.co.uk