Happy to be working with Birmingham Open Media to deliver Coder Beatz, a creative digital programme focusing on live coding for young black kids in the West Midlands.
Coder Beatz a new creative digital programme for young black kids aged between 11-15 years old.
We are running 4 monthly Coder Beatz workshops between November 2020 and February 2021. In each session we will be teaching kids how to create digital music and visuals using live coding and algorithms. The sessions will be delivered by Antonio Roberts who is a renowned digital artist and expert coder. Being a man of colour, Antonio is really passionate about inspiring young black kids to get skilled up on coding music and visuals.Kids will not need any music or tech experience, and we will provide laptops and headphones for them at BOM’s art center.
Over four sessions I’ll be teaching how to use TidalCycles for making music and Improviz for making visuals. All of the details, including sign up details, can be found by contacting Birmingham Open Media.
On a personal level I’m really happy to be delivering this programme because during the six-ish years I’ve been live coding at Algoraves I’ve noticed that the scene is very good at addressing gender inequalities but, at least in the UK scene, it’s still very white (which could probably be said of electronic music more generally).
Through delivering the programme I hope to demonstrate the creative possibilities of programming and, while I don’t expect those who take part to become fully fledged Algoraves, I do hope it encourages them to explore ways of making digital music and art beyond the “standard” ways of using tools like Ableton and Adobe software.
I also recognise that there are other issues that need to be addressed to make live coding more diverse. For example, encouraging more black people to build live coding tools, recognising and celebrating the impact black culture has had on digital art/music… And I hope this is part of that process.
Please get in touch with BOM if you’re interested or know anyone who would be great for this!