When Toddlers Become Technologists

Magic Acorns is an Early Years arts organisation in Great Yarmouth with long-standing community ties – families who came as children now return with their own. Over 150 families regularly attend their sessions.

Magic Acorns is a leading Early Years arts development organisation based in Great Yarmouth. With over 150 families regularly attending sessions, they’ve built a deeply embedded, long-term relationship with the local community.

Constantly pushing boundaries in early years creativity, their work spans regular sessions, artist residencies, and training for both young people and experienced practitioners. But it’s their latest project, PlayTech, that’s pushing the boundary between early years children and technology.

A Radical Experience for Toddlers

Supported by the Youth Music Energiser Fund, Magic Acorns’ PlayTech is an immersive, interactive experience where toddlers co-create with sound, projection, and tactile technologies. The space is filled with soft pods, hanging from the ceiling, that trigger soundscapes and visuals when touched or squeezed.

The project is a living example of co-creation. “All of the stuff has really been developed through knowing toddlers, ” Charlotte said. “We bring things in and ask: ‘Is this interesting to you? How are you using it?’”

Working with Charlotte and Joy are Nat, an audio-visual participatory artist, and Emily, a doctoral scholar and immersive digital artist. Together, the team developed sensory pods; children began squeezing them and they responded to touch by making a digital sound. Watching how the toddlers interacted with the pods, the team then added microphones. The pods now create another sound; both a digital and an analogue. “Now the pods feel really alive, ” Charlotte added.

Why introduce tech to early years?

PlayTech challenges traditional ideas of what it means to “listen” to children. “They were expressing themselves very clearly - what they wanted, what they didn’t want, who they wanted to engage with, ” Charlotte explained. “If we listen to that, we’re hearing their voices.”

“Tech is the future of music, ” Charlotte said, an improviser, animateur, academic, audio-visual artist, electro-acoustic composer, and a maker of emergent environments. 

But PlayTech isn’t just about cool gadgets, it’s about updating music education. “Are we preparing children to reproduce the sounds of the past, or to
create the music that hasn’t been heard yet?” Charlotte asked. “There’s something very decolonising about tech. It’s not about learning the violin, it’s about making music on your phone.

Our Sound of the Next Generation Report (SONG 2024) found that nearly half (45%) of Early Years parents report that their child prefers other music to nursery rhymes. Additionally, 47% of parents believe that the lyrical content of nursery rhymes need bringing up to date.

Parents, practitioners and the power of time

Joy and Charlotte emphasised the transformative power of unpressurised time - for both parents and practitioners. Joy explains that funding from Youth Music has afforded Magic Acorns practitioners the time to explore concepts more deeply.

"It's a really highly charged environment where you're working with people, sometimes incredibly vulnerable people, sometimes communities who are really on the edge. Giving practitioners space and time is really amazing.”

For parents, the sessions offer a rare opportunity to pause and step back. “You're expected to be your child's educator, to get them school-ready, talk to them all the time, to be doing this, this and this,” Charlotte states.

When we spoke to some of the families attending the PlayTech sessions, they all highlighted its calm and welcoming environment, their little one’s enthusiasm for the experience, and the value of interactive, creative activities that foster imagination, identity exploration, and confidence.

Another parent echoed this sentiment about their son, saying: "I think it's made him more confident socialising with other people, getting out... Really good for his development."

The Energiser Fund: Fuelling Early Years Innovation

The Youth Music Energiser Fund has been instrumental in bringing PlayTech to life. “We wouldn’t be doing this without it, ” Charlotte states. “It’s not just about developing new tech; it’s about giving us time. Time to explore, to reflect, to recharge.” 

That time is rare - and precious. “Time came up again and again in our research,” Joy said. “It’s game changing. We need more of it in Early Years education - for children, for parents, and for practitioners.”

Alongside other Energiser Fund projects like Whitnash Nursery School and TACO!, PlayTech showcases how Early Years work can be radical, edgy, and cool - far beyond the “cute” stereotypes.

The Energiser Fund was created to celebrate and energise creative practice with 2-4-year-olds, centring children’s voices, views, and lived experiences. By supporting projects that explore co-design and participation across multiple art forms - not just music - the fund aims to generate excitement, deepen understanding, and bring greater equity to an age group that’s often marginalised and underestimated. PlayTech is part of a movement that’s redefining what creativity in the Early Years can look like, and why it matters.

This has been made possible thanks to support from Arts Council England.