On Thursday 10th July The Duke of York hosted Dojo@Palace – a coding workshop for young people at Buckingham Palace. 60 young people attended from five schools in the local area – St Barnabas CE Primary School, Millbank Academy, Westminster City School, Pimlico Academy and Westminster Kingsway College.
Dojo@Palace was organised with and facilitated by CoderDojo – a not-for-profit organisation which seeks to teach young people how to code and improve their creative problem-solving skills. CoderDojo run dojos for young people throughout the UK and worldwide to learn how to code, develop apps, websites and games.
At Dojo@Palace, the young people were split into two groups – the younger children learning how to code using Scratch with the older children learning how to use HTML. Representatives from local businesses also attended Dojo@Palace with the vision that they will continue to support a regular dojo in Victoria.
During the session, HRH encouraged the young people to continue to develop their coding skills beyond Dojo@Palace. The Duke also met with the representatives from the local businesses to develop support in Victoria for a regular, ongoing dojo.
At the end of the session The Duke challenged the young people to continue to develop their digital skills. HRH also commented:
“I’m really pleased that we’ve been able to invite CoderDojo into the Palace as a stepping-stone to getting more business in the local area to think about this.”
As part of the session, an inspiring Digital Enterprise Award (iDEA) team also gave a short presentation to showcase GTracks – an app they have developed whilst at dojos.