To celebrate what would have been Prince’s 60th birthday and his work in championing diversity in technology, Makers Academy, Europe’s top coding bootcamp, is hosting a Prince-inspired vegan bake-off cabaret on Thursday 7th June to help empower 100,000 kids in the UK to code.
Contestants are invited to pitch their ideas for a Prince-inspired bake (sweet or savoury) to purplereignbakeoff@gmail.com.The deadline for entries is Thursday 24th May. The 10 best ideas will compete at a special evening with Great British Bake-off-style judging, interspersed with comedy, magic and music in tribute to Prince on Thursday 7th June. The winner will receive a Kitchen Aid Mixer or £500 cash. See www.huhbub.com for full terms and conditions.
The event is part of activities to raise £20,000 for Code Club UK and encourage volunteers, while promoting coding resources. Code Club UK has just over 6,000 clubs supporting 90,000 young people to code each week. £20,000 would support 2,000 young people to learn to code and would put Code Club UK on the road towards reaching 100,000.
Prince was the inspiration for and supporter of YesWeCode, an initiative to train 100,000 low-opportunity youths in the USA to become high-level programmers.
Following the shooting of Trayvon Martin, Prince observed, “When an African-American kid is wearing a hoodie, people think he’s a thug. But when a white kid is wearing a hoodie, people think he’s the next Mark Zuckerberg.” He questioned why there weren’t more African-Americans and Latinos excelling in technology and helping to run Silicon Valley. He saw that changing that number would change the stereotype — and empower a whole generation.
Code Club UK aims to inspire the next generation, and believes that all children should have the opportunity, no matter who they are or where they come from. It was founded in 2012, and in 2015 joined forces with the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a registered UK charity. Code Club UK supports a nationwide network of volunteers and educators who run free coding clubs where young people aged 9-13 build and share their ideas, learning along the way.
The judges are #CreatorsforChange fellow Leena Normington, musician Jack Cooper and baker Matthew-Simon Grossett. The cabaret includes singer Lady Nade, accompanied by Dan Everett, burlesque artist Fancy Chance, magician Arjay, hula hooper Amelia Sparkles and dancer Artfully Dodgy. The event will be compered by Elf Lyons. #purplereignbakeoff
