Magic Acorns creates extraordinary, multi-sensory arts experiences with – and for – young children.
We collaborate with children, artists, educators, and families to co-create through music, theatre, making, and play.
Based in Great Yarmouth and active across the UK, we champion access to extraordinary arts experiences for our very youngest.
The team
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Sophie is an early years artist passionate about engaging very young children and families through playful co-creation. Blending exploratory creative play with music, performance, and visual arts, she creates immersive experiences where children are active collaborators. Sophie holds a research master’s in early childhood music and arts education, combining academic insight with hands-on practice. She is also a co-founder and director of Magic Acorns, where she leads on creative producing, project management, and business development. Through Magic Acorns, Sophie brings together artists, educators, and communities to deliver innovative, research-informed early years arts projects rooted in joy, curiosity, and connection.
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Joy is a puppet theatre-maker, director and performer with a deep interest in making and enabling multidisciplinary creative experiences for and with very young children. She is a co-founder and director of Magic Acorns and her work encompasses growing arts organisations, connecting communities and developing creative practice through business leadership and supporting producer roles.
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Jessica once held the position of music worker at Great Yarmouth Sure Start Children’s Centre, and is a co-founder and director of Magic Acorns. This firsthand knowledge and experience of the power of music and the arts to build a sense of community for families with young children continues to inspire her academic work in research and evaluation. She is an academic programmes professor at the Royal College of Music, supervising a number of doctoral students with early childhood music-focused projects. Her role as researcher of the SALTmusic project helped her understanding of early childhood arts as communicative and expressive of what cannot be said in words. All her academic writing and speaking is based on research with Magic Acorns practice. She believes that every young child has the right to equitable access to arts and cultural experiences in their community.
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Charlotte Arculus is an improviser, animateur, academic, audio visual artist, electro-acoustic compos(t)er, and a maker of emergent environments. She has been a freelance, socially engaged arts practitioner for four decades and is a co-founder and director of Magic Acorns. Improvisation, relationality and emergence are at the heart of Charlotte’s creative processes and common factors across the diverse projects she works on. Developing complicit relationships between spaces, objects and people of all ages in performance , music, installation and workshops. She brings practice and theory of improvisation and wildness to the heart of what it means to be present. Charlotte’s PhD conceptualises young children’s ways of knowing as a vital but subjugated form of knowledge from which grown-up creativity emerges from and can, with practice, return to.
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Judy is a musician who plays music inspired by living by the Broads. She has run both music and forest school sessions for families with young children. She has over 30 years of experience working in music education and her local community. She believes passionately in supporting high-quality opportunities for everyone to explore the endless possibilities of play and she loves learning from young children.
Creative partners
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Natalie is a vocalist and performer bringing these core skills to her work as an early years music leader. With over 16 years experience of working with young children and families, she completed her Post Graduate Diploma in Early Years Music Education in 2012 with CREC. First and foremost Natalies aims to support the wellbeing of children and families she works with, and sets out to achieve this through nurturing, positive, playful and creative relationships. She has a strong interest in supporting children’s vocalisations in musical play to enable their development as confident communicators. She is delighted to continue to be a part of the Magic Acorns team.
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As a Creative/Art Director and Community Arts Worker, I am focused on communities and social issues. My work aims to drive social change and deepen understanding of human behaviour. I am passionate about working with children in their early years and with young people, helping them discover what they love to do while learning alongside them.
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Charlie Ditcham is an artist freelancer based in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. Turning mostly to rhythm, digital moving image, and open ended play, their work focuses on the creation of space within which attunement, regulation, and positive personal dialogue can take place.
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As a community dance artist, performer, and choreographer, I specialise in person-centred, playful approaches across all ages. I have a strong child-led early years music and movement practice. I am also a developmental movement play practitioner and CPD facilitator. As Artistic Director of In Cahoots Inclusive Dance, my work celebrates the strengths each individual brings, and I delight in creating inclusive spaces where creativity, connection, and belonging thrive.
Our Advisory Board and Non-Executive Directors
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Meglena Petkova
Nick O’Connor
Krista Ribbons
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Nicky Mekheimar
Paula Keith
Jade-Marie Anderson
Oscar Lotis
Melanie George
Chrissie Moore
Mary Stakelum
What we do
Magic Acorns creates spaces where children, families and artists can flourish.
Support us
We are not-for-profit and rely on grants and donations to deliver our work.