It’s no secret that young people have incredible imaginations; we see it all the time at Code Clubs. Often, their greatest inspirations come from the things they love most — like animals!
Cats were everywhere at Coolest Projects UK in Bradford! Young people showed us their purr-fect pals, reminding us how important cats and pets are for inspiring creators, and how personal interests fuel creativity and learning within Code Clubs.
Coolest Projects UK in Bradford
This all reinforced a core principle of Code Club: by giving creators agency, you’ll create a more meaningful learning experience. Learn more about the power of agency in our past blog post — it shares tips on helping creators work on ideas they care about.
“Making Code Club projects culturally relevant and responsive, that is, linked to what creators are interested in and passionate about, brings a whole new dimension to them. Levels of perseverance, collaboration, creativity, and pride reach new heights as creators realise they CAN achieve what they want to. And one of my favourite quotes from Coolest Projects was ‘I never knew computing could be so creative and so much fun!”
Rachael, Code Club mentor, St Nicholas Church of England Primary School and Nursery
Feline fun from Coolest Projects UK
Here’s what you’ve been waiting for — hot from Coolest Projects UK, an un-fur-gettable collection of cat projects we think you’ll enjoy as much as we did!
Explore animal-themed projects at your club
We’ve chosen three animal-themed projects for your Code Club to try. The projects allow creators to develop their coding skills while exploring their creativity and bringing their favourite animals to life on screen.
1. Cats! | Scratch Creators code a Scratch game where their mission is to guide cats to safety and not let any of them fall through the gaps!
2.Build a webpage | HTML/CSS and web browser Do you know a creator who’s totally into animals? This project guides them through building a cool webpage, where they can show off their favourite animal or a pet.
3. Fish food | AI Encourage creators to personalise this project by taking a photo of their pet fish to use in the game. After that, they’ll train the project’s machine learning model to understand voice commands to control their fish.
To find more animal-themed projects, head to our projects page and select ‘Animals’ from the topic drop-down menu.
This is your Code Club’s chance to share their amazing creations with a global audience and celebrate their coding projects — from a creator’s first Scratch project to big, small, in-progress, or world-changing ideas!
“The creators also feel very proud when they see their ideas on the internet… and when we told them people from [other] countries… can see your solution and your products.” – Code Club mentor, India
Whether your Code Club has participated before or this is your first time, Coolest Projects welcomes you. Creators can share their digital tech projects in our online gallery, join a celebration livestream, and receive certificates and personalised feedback! Entries for the online showcase are open until 28 May.
What projects can you submit?
Almost anything you want! Coolest Projects showcases digital making. Creator’s projects must use code, computers, or digital technology, but the subject matter is up to them, giving them true agency to share their interests and passions with the world.
Share your project with the world!
Think Scratch projects, micro:bit creations, app emulator designs, Python code — the possibilities are endless. Explore the seven submission categories for more ideas.
“I enjoyed seeing others’ projects and having this new experience” – Code Club creator, Ireland
“I enjoy showing my project and seeing others’ projects.” – Code Club creator, UK
Take a look at these projects for inspiration
The showcase gallery is now open and waiting for your club’s entries! Remember, all digital making projects are welcome, from beginner to advanced. Here are some 2025 Coolest Projects entries to inspire your Code Club:
Planet bounce
Roan, from Ireland had fun customising this simple space-themed Scratch project. Have a go, we guarantee that you will have lots of fun completing it!
A Scratch project from Roan
Bug the hunt game
A fantastic custom version of our Scratch ‘Catch the bug’ project has been created by Joshua from the UK. If you like toucans and parrots, this is for you! We really appreciate its unique personality.
Wastewise food loss and waste predictor
An advanced coder from the USA, Neel, has developed a machine learning model to predict and visualise food loss and waste percentages by commodity, country, and supply chain stage. This model will help identify trends and forecast future losses.
Neel’s machine learning project
It’s even easier to participate!
To make it easier for your club to participate, we’ve introduced group codes. A group code allows your club members to link their projects to your account. You can then quickly review and submit them to the online showcase.
Ready to share your Code Club’s work? Visit the Coolest Projects website to learn more and submit projects. We can’t wait to see what your Code Club makes!
Supporting our community is one of the key functions of the Code Club team. We are here to provide you with the resources, knowledge, and confidence to run successful Code Clubs. For example, we run training sessions that give new educators all the information they need to establish their own Code Club.
Melbourn Code Club
At the start of 2023, all our Code Club training sessions were three-hour webinars. We thought that a longer session would let us fit in everything — from the information needed to guide educators and volunteers through starting a club, to activities to explore all the tools and resources we offer and build confidence in the knowledge and skills that help you run a club. But we weren’t sure that this was the best way to support you and so we asked our community “What works best for you?”
Your feedback was amazing and so valuable to us! Based on what you told us, we updated the training we offer to create something that better fits your schedule and suits your needs.
New workshop format and times
When we pulled together all the feedback you gave us, some patterns emerged. Participants wanted more condensed sessions to fit into their schedules more easily. So we broke down the original three-hour sessions into two separate, one-hour workshops and offered additional slots at different times so that we had more opportunities to bring the global community together.
We moved from a webinar format to more practical workshops, with a whole session dedicated to a codealong to ensure that everyone felt confident in even the most complex ideas.
Feedback from a Code Club community member
Simple but effective changes
These changes, while simple, proved transformative. Having time to reflect between the two workshops enabled deeper thinking about the content, and we found that leaders came to the second session — the practical codealong activity — more confident and ready to learn. The additional time slots also increased the global reach of each session, with participants from as far afield as Togo and Myanmar joining us. We’ve really loved having so many different voices and sharing so many different club experiences.
There’s always something to learn!
Still evolving thanks to community feedback
Because you are all so generous with feedback, we were able to keep iterating on our new workshops’ content and delivery, tweaking it as we heard new ideas from the community. We’re proud to say that the training never stays the same — it continues to develop as we hear more from you.
Empowered by this feedback-driven approach, we expanded our new workshops format to cover other technologies, with workshops on HTML & CSS, Python, AI & Scratch, and Micro:bit, all stemming from the original Scratch-focused workshop. We’ve been excited to see so much of the community taking the opportunity to upskill and add more advanced options into their Code Clubs.
The outcome: A comprehensive learning journey
Today, we are proud that our workshops are the result of community collaboration. What began as a singular three-hour session has developed into a series of dynamic, interactive workshops catering to the wide interests of our growing community of educators and volunteers.
Darren Bayliss, Code Club Programme Coordinator Ireland, led the development and delivers most of the session. He has drawn not only on the invaluable community feedback, but also on a decade of experience running his Code Club to make this transition a success. He also notes that this journey was highly enriching for him as it brought back many long-forgotten tips and tricks he could share during the workshops. Most importantly, it has been great fun!
Darren, was amazing. Really easy to follow training and explained everything that was needed. Great to be trained by someone so passionate. Thank you so much, I am feeling much more confident. (anonymous feedback)
“Just a note to say thanks for the two Python workshops. I found them very useful, particularly as you were able to include your real-world experience of supporting Python in your own Code Clubs.”
Phil Wade, Code Club volunteer @ Clevedon Library
Join us in 2024
In 2023, we ran 41 workshops attended by 1,187 people, including both experienced club leaders and new members of our global community. We’re really looking forward to growing this in 2024!
If you would like to join us to learn together, check out the training pages on our website. Sessions are advertised about a month in advance, and feature in our monthly events email, which is sent to everyone in the community.
Explore our website
We’d love to see you and hear about your club experiences as we all develop our skills and knowledge! Join us in this exciting journey as we continue to code the future together.
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