Young Rewired State is a global community of self-taught young coders under the age of 18 who use their digital skills to "program the world around them". Every summer YRS stages a Festival of Code. It is a sign of the progress coding has made that when the festival was first held, in 2009, it took its co-ordinator Emma Mulqueeny "three months to find 50 young coders in the whole of the UK". At this year's festival, held recently, over 1,000 children took part at 61 centres across the country.
During the week the young programmers built apps, games, websites and projects, some just for fun and others which met real-life needs and challenges. The venues included the Raspberry Pi Foundation offices in Cambridgeshire and the Compare the Market HQ in Peterborough. After brainstorming ideas they worked on their projects. All that is asked of the participants is that they use one piece of open data. Teams had access to a mentor who could offer advice and support, but otherwise the teams worked independently. At the end of the week the teams presented their final projects in front of a panel of judges in a huge 'show and tell' event at the University of Plymouth.
Awards were given for best designs and best use of code, along with unique categories in the spirit of YRS such as "Code a Better Country" and "Should Exist". Among the most popular projects were "YouDraw", a crowd-sourced video animation platform giving the opportunity to create user-generated animated music videos; "Tourify", an app supplying unique customised tours for travellers; and "Miles Per Pound", a website which calculates the cost efficiency of your car. Other more idiosyncratic innovations included an app that measures proximity to danger, a bitcoin exchange rate service and a coat rack weather forecasting device.
Children as young as 8 made presentations that as one adult tech start-up founder commented, "could rival those of people 3 or 4 times their age".
#YRS2014 participants from all over the world present today as well! Incredible people and projects! @youngrewired pic.twitter.com/zhf4t2rTTk
— Alex ThinkBig (@AlexThinkBig) August 3, 2014
However, it is not so much the winning that matters in Young Rewired State as the coding: perhaps the definitive image of the event is that of hundreds of kids at their laptops, not playing games or wasting time on the web but creating new games and new websites. The final gathering is a chance to have fun, meet other members of the community and learn from each other. These are the people born after 1997 who, in Mulqueeny's view, are the 'digital natives': children who have grown up around the web and who through 'peer to peer learning' have the skills to shape society and education.
"Digital skills in education has been a hot topic for the past few years", says Mulqueeny. "Young Rewired State, the organisation behind the Festival of Code, was a champion of that effort - but the festival is much more about this community of young people." The Plymouth gathering also included 40 youngsters from overseas as well as a YRS group from Kosovo who presented remotely.
And for the final phoootooo, the entire group of @YRSKosovo, parents & children together. #YRS2014 #YRSFoC pic.twitter.com/PV6ZpA1iyS
— STIKK (@STIKK_KS) August 3, 2014
It may make some feel rather old and unskilled by comparison; but it should also leave us inspired and confident about the future innovators, engineers and entrepreneurs amongst us.https://youngrewiredstate.org/
Gary Wiles
