As part of Develop Me’s Coding Fellowship, students have begun a 12-week intensive course based down at Bristol’s Paintworks.
“It had become increasingly difficult to find skilled employees, so we decided to start working towards a solution, whilst helping to upskill existing digital teams along the way”
The Fellowship offers students a chance to kick-start their career in web development. Students are put through a bootcamp where they will learn the fundamentals of coding. Then the curriculum uses project-led learning as the students collaborate with Bristol’s tech community.
The fellowship was created for the benefit of tech businesses and wannabe developers, as Pete New, founder of Develop Me, tells us: “It had become increasingly difficult to find skilled employees, so we decided to start working towards a solution, whilst helping to upskill existing digital teams along the way.”
Develop Me’s co-founder Oli Ward heads up the teaching, and will be helped by industry experts such as Mark Wales, creator of password testing site How Secure Is My Password?, and Maff Rigby founder of website monitoring company getTestr. Pete says, “We’re keen to create a real community around the fellowship programme. It’s been developed for industry and directly shaped by local tech and creative businesses.”
Paid work!
Students are also given a paid industry work placement, and help finding employment as a web developer upon graduation.
“We want there to be a continuous conversation between our students, industry and us”
Nudge Digital and OnCorps are two of the companies offering paid work placements to fellowship graduates, they’ve also been involved in helping to shape the course structure and content to reflect industry needs. As Pete explains: “We want there to be a continuous conversation between our students, industry and us, so we can evolve the programme to always remain relevant to the local digital and tech sectors. A large part of this conversation will happen at the thriving tech and creative meetup scene here in Bristol.”
Where to sign up
Applications for the Autumn cohort of the Coding Fellowship are now open. If you’re interested in finding out more about the programme you can download an info pack at the fellowship website, email the team at hello@developme.training or attend one of the introductory workshops scheduled throughout the summer (scheduled for Thursday 30 June & Thursday 14 July).
Develop Me, the company behind the Coding Fellowship, are keen to hear from tech and creative meetup groups in need of space to run events in the evenings or weekends. Get in touch if you’re in need!
