Funding

Self-funded

Activities

We run two free to attend sessions for young people. You can book onto them via our events page.

Weekly on Wednesdays, from 4.30-5.30, we run our Mini Makers group, for ages 8-12. The whole group follows a set activity, which rotates every 2/3 weeks.

Fortnightly on Saturdays, from 10.30-12, we run our Teens group, for ages 11+. Bring your own project, or be inspired by our kit including 3D printers, Arduino boards or Lego robots. Our team will be on hand to help!

We have also in the past taken these sessions out on the road to schools and libraries.

We pride ourselves on keeping all of our activities free to attend so everyone is able to take part.

You can read more about our sessions on last year’s recap blog post.

Learnings

We’ve learnt a lot about different pieces of tech, and about how different people learn.

Just some of the activities we’ve developed sessions for include:

• Designing a 3D model and using a 3D printer
• Setting up a Raspberry Pi computer and coding with it – including using cameras and electronics!
• Programming electronics with Arduino boards
• Taking and editing photos
• Using drag and drop programming with Scratch, LEGO robots, BBC micro:bits and PyBadges

Developing sessions means we find a lot of quirks, oddities, and hacks that we need to remember to take in to account when running an activity with them.

Each session starts off just by one of us being curious and wondering if something is possible, or inspiration from somewhere! We then plan, write, and test, learning materials (“scripts”) for the session and they usually go through a few revisions. Sometimes, this is to make activities easier to follow – other times, it is because software or hardware changes and we need to make sure our materials stay correct and up-to-date.

You can have a look at what one of our scripts looks like, here: PDF – 3D Design a namebadge

This process, and the scripts, have been honed over time to make them more easily accessible and inclusive. We’ve found this activity makes a great introduction to the workplace and often it’s one of the first jobs our work experience students get started with. Not only does it boost overall tech, making, and coding skills, but reviewing our session scripts requires attention to detail and communication skills to ensure notes are recorded properly.