Creative youth coding program

A NEW workshop aiming to encourage young people to learn how to code will be at Bendigo Library next month.

The Creative Bytes program is designed to teach young students element of computer code structure, which they will use to make a video game on the day.

The not-for-profit initiative was co-founded by musician Stewart McMillian to provide new opportunities for young people from regional areas access to coding education.

“My friend and I noticed that many children weren’t able to access coding programs, it was really reserved for elite private schools or select public schools in the inner city,” he said.

“We thought wouldn’t be great to produce a program that was either cost effective or had little cost and be able to tour the program to regional Victoria.”

Creative Bytes took about a year and a half to develop and was a collaboration between Mr McMillian, academics from Melbourne and Monash universities, and a representative from UNESCO.

A pilot of Creative Bytes took place last October in at Warrnambool Library and Mr McMillian said it was fantastic to see kids from low-socioeconomic areas experience coding for the first time.

“These kids had no prior coding experience,” he said. “By the end of the day they’d learned a key mathematical concept which will assist them in school at maths and at the same time created a video game to share with friends.”

Students will be guided by volunteer tutors in the learning, and then supported to design their own video game world complete with characters.

Mr McMillian said exposing kids to the creative coding process at a young age could help them develop skills to be used later in life for work or other creative endeavours.

“People that I’ve talked to that learnt game development in university had a similar concept back in school but they’re not necessarily making games at the moment,” he said.

“They’re doing mathematics, they’re doing animation at marvel stadiums in the adverts for the banners, so it opens up a wide range of job skills in the future.

“It’s just all about opening that door.”

The board of Creative Bytes is made up equally of professionals from both arts and technology backgrounds, meaning students are exposed to new digital developments in creative arts production.

“This makes it diverse, makes it engaging and makes creative bytes unique from other coding programs,” Mr McMillian said.

“At the end of the day arts is now becoming more digital with digital animation, digital production, even music composition is becoming more digital.”

The Creative Bytes workshop is free to attend for students between the ages of 10-12 years old.

The next workshop in Bendigo will be on 7 October at Bendigo Library and tickets can be reserved at creativebytes.org.