We are a charity who provides specially trained entertainers and performers that bring fun, laughter and relief to sick and vulnerable children across East Anglia.

The founders Annie Aris and Patrick Jacobs have had many years of experience working in the field of specialised children’s entertainment in hospitals such as Great Ormond Street, Guy’s, St Thomas’s in London and the world renowned Addenbrookes Childrens Hospital – Cambridge as well as others. They have also worked within many special needs centres / schools, hospices and care homes. Their in-depth and wide-ranging experience, has allowed them to hone their skills and understanding to a high level. They often requests to share their valuable insights with a range of both medical and educational practitioners.

We are a charity who provides specially trained entertainers and performers that bring fun, laughter and relief to sick and vulnerable children across East Anglia.

The founders Annie Aris and Patrick Jacobs have had many years of experience working in the field of specialised children’s entertainment in hospitals such as Great Ormond Street, Guy’s, St Thomas’s in London and the world renowned Addenbrookes Childrens Hospital – Cambridge as well as others. They have also worked within many special needs centres / schools, hospices and care homes. Their in-depth and wide-ranging experience, has allowed them to hone their skills and understanding to a high level. They often requests to share their valuable insights with a range of both medical and educational practitioners.

We are Laughter Specialists who provide bespoke interactions through a range of skills which include comedy, clowning, magic, songs, play acting, music, puppets and most importantly improvisation whilst maintaining the utmost sensitivity to the needs of the hospitalised children and other vulnerable groups. Key to our success is our ability to listen, be patient, maintain awareness and offer complete acceptance whilst using our artistic skills to enable laughter, fun and magical moments to flourish in sometimes very difficult situations. We are often called on to deal with some specific difficulty that a child may be having, and are able to engage with that child to alleviate or bring some relief to the tension, anxiety and fear they maybe experiencing. Our strength lies in our ability to accept each individual, whatever their physical, intellectual, emotional or social ability. We engage with them appropriately depending on their needs, individually or in a group setting.

The Laughter Specialists work in, hospices, hospitals Special Needs centres/schools and care homes, in fact anywhere we are required. We are continually looking to expand our much appreciated services into new outlets across East Anglia and the East of England.
We can provide taster sessions for up to an hour or come for a whole morning or afternoon. We can visit individual children in wards, classrooms, or playrooms. We try to be as versatile and adaptable as we can as we understand the constraints and adaptation requirements of caring, so we can change our programme and improvise with our audience in a moment.

If you are inspired by our work and would like to help our charity we would be delighted to hear from you.

From fundraising & supporting at an event, to spreading the word about our work we have a range of opportunities to enable you to support our unique charity. It is very important to us that you enjoy any experience working with us as we appreciate your time is valuable, and are therefore extremely grateful when someone chooses to support us.

We would love to have a chat if this is of interest you and would ask you in the first instance to either call

Annie Aris (Founder) on 07980-570466 or
Email us at fundraisingteam@thelaughterspecialists.co.uk

We are eagerly waiting to hear from you or your organisation.

Firstly you must enjoy working with children, be happy to be silly, and have a passion for fun and laughter . . . the rest we can teach you !!!

As you can imagine the Laughter Specialists have spent many years developing their skills and have learned many things during this time. Therefore their knowledge and experience are essential to shaping our training programme. Our Lead trainer is Annie Aris who as well as being a founder of the charity was the very first female ‘clown’ in the country, and to work in the famous Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital. As well as a highly skilled entertainer, she also has childcare qualifications having worked in the childcare and social work sector too. She has also developed her work with special needs children enhancing their language opportunities so if you wanted to explore a career as a Laughter Specialist and decided to sign up you would be in expert hands. To deliver our various training packages we work through our partner Community interest Company ‘Laughter Works Training Academy’ who provide a range of bespoke options to suit your requirements.

Please contact us on 07980-570466 or email us at fun@thelaughterspecialists.co.uk to find out how to you can have a very rewarding career making a real difference.

Since our charity started in 2007 we have been privileged to help over 60,000 children and continue to increase the number of beneficiaries we help. Whilst we are pleased to have reached out to such a high number of children and families, we are always more focussed on the impact and the positive difference we make. Longer term we are aiming to expand our service to a wider geographical area and eventually across the country nationally, but our priority will always be on the quality of our work.

The relief, support and unique moments of fun is our main objective always.

Whilst we originally set up as a children’s charity, and that remains our main area of work we have also provided our services to adults including the elderly and those with special needs.

This is an area of work that we are also looking to expand in the future. We are aware of some amazing research results of the impact of similar work with the elderly and individuals suffering with dementia. We would be happy to discuss these options with you or your organisation if this is an area of our work that is of interest to you.