Thanks for having us, Galway! 🌊🌟

Our Pytch team hit the road and headed west for the Galway Science and Technology Festival Exhibition, part of Science Week coordinated by Research Ireland/Taighde Éireann. The University of Galway campus was buzzing with curious young minds and families eager to explore all things science and technology. We were delighted to be right in the middle of the excitement.

Four fully booked coding workshops 👾👩🏼‍💻

Across the day, Ben and Glenn delivered four one-hour workshops introducing participants to Pytch and helping them build their own simple Space Invaders-style game. A total of 50 young learners took part and even a few enthusiastic adults who chose to stay for the session. Every session was fully booked. In fact, demand was so strong that we unfortunately had to turn a few people away from the last one because the room was at capacity.

The young coders threw themselves into the challenge. There were plenty of determined faces, a few puzzled expressions during those tricky moments and best of all the happy exclamations of “Yes, it’s working!” when everything came together onscreen. We love seeing that spark of confidence when a small change in code makes something move, animate or shoot back.

Why events like this matter 💡

Pytch is all about supporting the transition from block-based programming to Python, helping learners take their first steps into text-based coding in a playful and achievable way. Events like the Galway Festival are a fantastic opportunity for us to meet learners and see first-hand how they explore and problem-solve.

We also get great feedback from real use in busy workshop environments. These insights help us continue to refine and improve Pytch so it works even better for teachers, students and independent learners at home.

A brilliant day in Galway 🎓🏢

The Exhibition brought together schools, universities, research teams and companies to celebrate creativity, curiosity and innovation. We would have loved more time to explore all the other incredible stands and shows taking place but the workshops kept us happily busy from start to finish. A huge thank you to the organisers and volunteers who worked so hard to make the day run smoothly. We really appreciated the warm welcome and the excellent support with room setup and equipment, especially from Brendan Smith (Insight – Research Ireland Centre for Data Analytics), Anne Murray (Manager of the Galway Science & Technology Festival) and Kai Xu (PhD student).

Until next time 🚀

We left Galway energised and already looking forward to future opportunities to share Pytch with learners around Ireland. Thank you to everyone who joined a workshop. We hope you had fun and discovered something new about what you can make with code.

Keep experimenting. Keep creating. And keep saying “Yes, it’s working!” 👏