To follow on from the story about how to put girls off from programming and technology … here’s what we did to fix it
- Make it as mainstream as possible, more Festival of building digital stuff plus fun
- Have plenty to do that everyone can share e.g. photobooth, sprint challenges, maker fairs, graffiti wall, next gen tech
- Watched what everyone loved and did more of that, watched what made them yawn, did less of that
- Use social media channels such as Vine, Snapchat and Instagram
One thing to note, that has helped us grow from 2% to 30% in seven Festivals. When girls come back, they bring their mates (in most cases). When boys come back they don’t (in most cases).
It is about changing the culture, not bullying the girls.The Festival of Code runs form July 27th to August 2nd information here
Emma Mulqueeny 