The Afternoon Delights Shows are delightfully funny, awfully amusing and highly engaging magic and variety shows developed specifically for Care Home audiences.
Taking our inspiration from the leading lights of the golden age of entertainers, such as Ken Dodd, Morecambe and Wise, Bruce Forsyth and many others, we have dedicated the last few years of our life to carefully crafting, honing and developing a high-quality and age-appropriate show that can be adapted for all levels of differing abilities.
The Afternoon Delights Care Home Shows are not just a magic show – they contains a lot of magic and a wide mix of variety entertainment, including comedy, sing-a-longs, props, puppets, stunts and much more – you can rest assured that we incorporate every element you would expect from a professional show and bring it into the unique Care Home setting.
Enjoyment, entertainment, happiness and well-being are at the core of everything we do, and Afternoon Delights has been carefully designed using cutting-edge neuroscience, psychology and care staff input to engage residents whilst staying true to traditional variety entertainment. You can find out more about the scientific benefits of live entertainment here.
We are Alex and George – father-and-son professional magicians who combine George’s expertise as a psychologist and Alex’s love of theatre and the arts, together with many years working both in the voluntary and public sector, to provide tailored entertainment and an exceptional service for Care Homes.
Afternoon Delights are wonderfully funny magical shows, packed full of creative, engaging and fun performance pieces that can cater for every step of the aging journey.
We have a number of different themed shows available throughout the year, including Christmas, Spring, Resident’s Birthdays, Summer and Halloween shows.
The Afternoon Delights shows, like all of our shows, has been carefully curated and developed to be performed across a wide range of care home audiences with a variety of abilities.
They all include a hilarious mixture of magic, comedy, variety, music and interactive moments designed to stimulate and engage your residents (and staff members too!). We usually aim to arrive 15 minutes or so early to build up the atmosphere as people arrive and get themselves seated.
These shows are all fun, engaging and interactive – designed around the needs and abilities of your residents.
You can see a number of photos from our Afternoon Delights shows below. These have all been previously published by the various Care Homes we have worked with on their Social Media and websites.
You can see below a few of our videos – the first is a few of our reviews and testimonials from our recent clients and the care homes who have booked us. The second is a quick overview of Afternoon Delights, and the third is why it matters so much to Alex.
We have specifically written and produced the Afternoon Delights shows to make sure it is ideal for residents of care homes, and it includes suitable magic, nostalgia, music and comedy.
Our magic is a great way to share something special and entertaining with your residents. It doesn’t matter what the situation is, whether it’s just your weekly entertainment slot, if it’s a birthday party, holiday party, if it’s a seasonal or festive celebration, magic is an incredibly fun, engaging and unique experience for all!
The Afternoon Delights show is a treat for all. We aim to get residents involved, engaged and enjoying themselves – though we certainly understand and respect if they’re not able or willing to become directly involved. For us, it’s about creating a fun, rewarding and engaging atmosphere inside the home!
We are both very proud members of Equity – the variety and entertainment organisation that has served actors, entertainers, and live variety acts for nearly 100 years.
We are both professional entertainers – meaning we earn our living out of performing around the UK and across the world – and so we are very happy to belong to Equity. It means we are covered for Public Liability Insurance up to £10,000,000 and belong to a 47,000 strong group of professional performers.
We pride ourselves on being prompt, both in communication, and on never having been late to a paid performance. We are always open and transparent about what we do and always strive to deliver a high-quality, engaging and fascinating performance!
The Afternoon Delights Care Home Show has been designed and developed from the ground up with residents of care homes in mind.
Both of us have a over 5 decades of combined experience working in the public and voluntary sector, and so when it comes to understanding the needs and abilities of those in care homes and creating an instant, compassionate and meaningful relationship with our audience, there couldn’t be any two finer performers up for the task.
We are using cutting edge neuroscience and psychological evidence that stimulating activities involving art, music, language, learning and storytelling, help improve interactions, mood and mobility for those living with dementia and others with residential needs.
We have carefully curated material developed around residents’ interests and insights from lifestyle interviews, and created a highly-innovative, evidence-based collection of activities in our multi-disciplinary show based around magic, comedy, music and nostalgia.
We are both fully dedicated to three key, measurable factors across everything we do:
Engagement can be anything from standing up and taking a hand’s-on approach, to a capable level of interaction, to sitting back and relaxing as we talk and laugh around. We aim to perform with the residents as much as possible (whilst, of course, respecting their wishes if they do not want to be involved) rather than performing to or at them.
Enjoyment is typically measured by smiles on their faces, laughter from their mouths and a nice round of applause at the end. However, as we know, there can be a very wide range of abilities just in one care home, let alone across the whole of the UK. Due to this variation, our aim is to create a high-energy, engaging and captivating atmosphere that can be enjoyed across a wide range of abilities.
By using a neuroscience-informed approach, we aim to stimulate residents on a whole number of levels. We use a multi-sensory approach including noise makers, tactile objects, props, puppets, hats, musical cues and, of course, visual and cognitive magic, to reach out to as wide a range of residents as possible. This has been shown (see the evidence below this section) through much research to aid in helping mood, movement and social interactions in many people.
We pride ourselves on our inclusive approach to prioritising well-being through live, interactive performance.
There has been a number of government and government-backed research papers over the last 5 years that prove how access to arts makes care home residents happier and healthier (see Key Evidence below for more).
We believe that residents should be offered a wide range of arts activities to enhance their quality of life and increase their wellbeing. Our aim is to provide a wide-range of variety-themed activities in our Afternoon Delights show (such as signing, dancing, mime, puppetry, circus acts and more) that allows a wide band of residents access to an artistic experience.
Together, they began performing in 2011 and haven’t looked back since. They have worked closely with and learned from some of the leading performers and entertainers in the industry for the last two decades, taking them across the world from Las Vegas to Blackpool.
They currently live in the West Midlands and travel across the UK performing their magic, comedy and variety shows as AGMagicians.
Our magic is an incredibly unique and powerful way to entertain and engage your residents – we count ourselves as being incredibly lucky to go around the country sharing wonderful entertainment.
We know and appreciate, especially after the last few years of the Coronavirus, how important the experience of live entertainment is for staff and residents.
We love seeing people enjoying themselves, laughing and singing together, or even just taking in the atmosphere of our performances. We know how vital this is for resident’s wellbeing.
This is very personal to us – George has spent much of his life in the public and voluntary sector as a psychologist working with vulnerable adults. We’re always personally moved by the responses we receive from our audiences.
Because of this, we are always dedicated to delivering high-quality, suitable and enjoyable entertainment across the country to as many care homes as possible.
Alex and George are father-and-son magicians and variety artists who perform professionally across the UK.
George began developing his skills with magic in the early 1990’s as a psychologist in a small non-profit organisation working with excluded and vulnerable people. He used it to both demonstrate important psychological principles and develop young people’s confidence and self esteem.
Alex grew up surrounded by magic, performers and people who felt a strong calling for social justice. He began attending acting school in the early 2000’s and has always loved stage, screen and storytelling. He is a huge advocate for using the performing arts to explore mental health and well-being.
Together, they began performing in 2011 and haven’t looked back since. They have worked closely with and learned from some of the leading performers and entertainers in the industry for the last two decades, taking them across the world from Las Vegas to Blackpool.
They currently live in the West Midlands and travel across the UK performing their magic, comedy and variety shows as AGMagicians.
