Free UK coding groups for women

Image: Mums In Technology coding class

Here is a current list of current FREE UK coding groups that help women learn to code, ordered alphabetically and by region. You now have no reason not to pursue your coding dreams!

As you can see, there are many groups, all of different sizes, skill-level and coding area, so take your time to browse for the best ones for you. Don’t take too long though – some application deadlines are coming up very soon!

If you want to learn technical tools instead, check out my post series on learning to contribute to open source documentation using GitHub.

UK-wide groups

Name: codebar
Location: London, Brighton, Cambridge, Birmingham, Manchester, Bournemouth, Belfast, Oxford, Kent, Norwich, Edinburgh (and growing)
Twitter: @codebar
Founder: Despo Pentara
Website: codebar.io
These are free weekly coding sessions run by volunteers. The aim is to bridge the diversity gap in coding, and you can go along if you are from an underrepresented group, including if you identify as female. Book a place, then turn up with your website project for help from experienced developers. There’s also free pizza! Sessions are very busy and you need to sign up to their mailing list to get on to new sessions when they are announced.

Name: Code First: Girls
Location: various local chapters around the UK
Twitter: @CodeFirstGirls
Founder: Alice Bentinck and Matt Clifford
Website: codefirstgirls.org.uk

Code First: Girls aims to increase the number of women in tech by lowering the barriers to entry through teaching free coding courses on university campuses, as well as some corporate locations. They offer free coding courses of varying lengths (some six weeks, others eight) in varying degrees of difficulty. Courses include building a website, building a web app, and Ruby and Python.

This is a fantastic community, and as an alumna myself I would strongly recommend applying if you can. You have to be either a current university student, within two years of having graduated from any course of study, or under 23. They also run lots of free networking and career events (open to anyone) relating to tech that fill up quickly, so sign up to their mailing list!

Image caption: Sheffield Code First: Girls

Name: Django Girls
Twitter: @djangogirls
Location: UK-wide (including Cardiff, Milton Keynes and Manchester)
Founder: Ola Sendecker
Website: djangogirls.org
Django Girls offer free workshops in Python and Django. Django is an open source web framework based on the programming language Python. Django Girls workshops are crash courses aimed at total beginners, so NO PRIOR EXPERIENCE NEEDED, woohoo! You don’t need to know anything about programming. You just have to bring your own laptop and commit to an all-day workshop. It’s worth subscribing to them so you don’t miss the next event being held in your area (although this might not be for a while).

Name: Pyladies
Location: Dublin, London, Edinburgh
Twitter: @PyLadiesLondon
Website: pyladies.com
Meetup: Edinburgh: http://www.meetup.com/PyLadiesEdinburgh, London: http://www.meetup.com/pyladieslondon/
A super-cute group devoted to Python-lovers! The Pyladies are a group of female developers worldwide who love the Python programming language. They want to get more women into Python and mentor them to help them become leaders. Through Pyladies meetups, you can learn from experienced developers, and meet with other like-minded women who are professional programmers or want to learn Python.

Name: Rails Girls
Twitter: @railsgirls_ldn
Location: London, Manchester
Website: railsgirls.com
Rails Girls is a global nonprofit initiative that aims to teach women to programme. They run lots of free workshops, and I’ve personally benefited from Rails Girls coding mentorship. It handily fits in around your working week in typical 1.5 day workshops. It’s a super happy, inclusive atmosphere, with massive amounts of enthusiasm needed. This is a global initiative so the workshops aren’t that frequent in specific locations. Keep checking back or sign up to their mailing list so you don’t miss out.

Name: #techmums
Location: UK-wide
Twitter: @TechmumsHQ
Founder: Sue Black OBE
Website: techmums.co
#techmums aims to give mums the skills they need to be professionally successful and teaches a variety of digital skills, including app and web design, and Ruby programming. It aims to help mums stop being afraid of technology and build their confidence. You need to sign up for more information about their courses. Inspiring founder and computer scientisit Sue Black has been awarded an OBE, and is the author of the fastest crowd-funded book of all time, about saving Bletchley Park (the UK World War II centre for decrypting enemy messages).

London groups

Name: ClojureBridge
Twitter: @ClojureBridge
Website: http://www.clojurebridge.org/
ClojureBridge aims to increase diversity within the Clojure community by offering free, beginner-friendly Clojure programming workshops for underrepresented groups in tech. It aims to increase diversity of experience and collective skillset in the functional programming community. The London workshops are aimed at those who identify as women, transgender and non-binary and strive to provide a safe, welcoming space for attendees.

Name: Founders & Coders
Twitter: @founderscoders
Founder: Dan Sofer
Website: foundersandcoders.com
Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/founderscoders/
Founders & Coders runs a full-time, no-fee coding bootcamp. They also run a number of meetups for people who are interested in their course, who want to learn more about programming, or who want help with their startup projects. They are open to both men and women.

Name: Ladies of Code (formerly Ladies Who Code)
Twitter: @ladiesofcode
Founders: Angie Maguire and Natalia Ines
Website: ladiesofcode.com
Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/Ladies-of-Code-UK/
They’re an 2000+ international community of female developers at all levels of experience. They get together on a monthly basis either for coding sessions or for coding talks and workshops. You don’t have to be a proper techie to join but this group is focused more at professional coders, although they are open and inclusive so anyone can go along to the meetups. They’re relaunching in June so check back on their website in a few weeks.

Name: Mums in Technology
Twitter: @MumsinTech
Founder: June Angelides
Website: mumsintechnology.co.uk
They are a pop-up coding company for mums. Their courses run for six weeks and are not free, but this group is included as places are heavily subsidised by their corporate partners and they are specifically focused on teaching mums to learn digital skills for business. All of the courses are in between the school run and child friendly so that mums don’t have to choose between babies and digitally upskilling. They are certainly worth checking out if you are a mum interested in technology looking for your next career move or perhaps returning to the professional world. They even bring their babies to meetings, which is a lot of fun! Applications for June close on 27 May, so hurry.

Name: Node Girls
Twitter: @nodegirls_LDN
Website: nodegirls.io
This group teaches Node.js to women for free, is run by volunteers and they are a female-only team! Node.js is an area of software development that uses elements of JavaScript and is popular for its method of executing code. It is used by many large corporate companies including LinkedIn and Netflix.

Name: R-Ladies
Twitter: @RLadiesLondon
Website: http://www.meetup.com/R-Ladies-Coding-Club-London/
This is a meetup focused on programming in R, which is a language and environment used in statistical computing and graphics – basically used in data analysis! This area of programming is probably going to be a bit more technical than your average amateur coder is looking for, but if you want to learn R you should definitely check them out!

Name: Women Hack for Nonprofits
Twitter: @WHFNP
Location: North London
Founders: Vinita Rathi and Nandhini Narasimhan
Website: womenhackfornonprofits.com
This is a group of women who work with nonprofits to provide free open source software for social causes. The way to get involved is generally to volunteer, and either learn tech skills or teach them. Sign up on their website and you will be invited to their Slack channel (Slack is an integrated communication platform for teams). Joining Women Who Hack for Nonprofits a great way to gain real-world experience and build your portfolio, learn completely new skills, or volunteer the skills you have to help others.

Name: Women Who Code
Twitter: @WWCLondon
Website: womenwhocode.com/london
Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/Women-Who-Code-London/
This is a US-based coding group which now has a London chapter. They are aimed at providing coding talks and workshops for professional women, in order to inspire them to excel in technology careers. Women Who Code London are VERY popular, so I recommend signing up to their newsletter to make sure you hear about new events as soon as they’re announced!

Northern groups

Name: CodeUp Manchester
Location: Manchester, Stockport, Sheffield
Twitter: @codeupuk
Founder: Claire Dodd
Website: codeupmcr.co.uk
This group is a free mentoring program for men and women who would like to learn coding. Once a month, CodeUp UK provides a workspace for people with no programming skills to come and learn the basics, with mentors available to answer questions, help you with your projects and give advice. Sessions are also suitable for those who have basic skills already and want to develop, and intermediate or advanced coders who want to go along to a space where everyone is immersed in code! Unmissable. They also have a fantastically useful resource directory for learning coding.

Name: freeCodeCamp MCR
Location: Manchester
Twitter: @freecodecampmcr
Founder: James Davenport
Website: https://www.facebook.com/groups/free.code.camp.manchester/
This is a weekly coding group for people of all skills levels to get together and work through the free online tutorials on freeCodeCamp. Attendees are a mixture of absolutely coding newbies to professional developers, and you will be able to get help on your projects. The atmosphere is informal and welcoming. Don’t miss out!

Name: CodeUp Huddersfield
Location: Huddersfield
Twitter: @codeupuk
Founder: Claire Dodd
Website: https://madlab.org.uk/groups/codeup-huddersfield/
This is a branch of CodeUp Manchester and takes place on the third Monday of every month. Attendees can learn digital skills such as writing an app for a smartphone or creating a website for fun.

Name: Northcoders
Location: Manchester
Twitter: @northcoders
Website: northcoders.com
The North’s technology sector is booming and the demand for developers well outstrips supply. Northcoders are unique in their promise to get their alumni into employment of 26k or above, or return their fees in full. They are partnered with businesses to streamline the progression from coder to professional software engineer. Their 13-week JavaScript engineering course normally costs several thousand pounds, but they pledged on International Women’s Day to run a sponsored #womenintech cohort in 2016. This is a pretty amazing opportunity, but you do need to have some level of familiarity with JavaScript and it’s not for complete novices – though they also run a helpful beginners’ course to get you up to scratch for the main bootcamp!

Midlands

Name: School of Code
Location: Birmingham
Twitter: @theSchoolOfCode
Website: http://bootcamp.schoolofcode.co.uk/
This is the only free bootcamp that I’ve found available in the midlands, and was started by Chris Meah who is has partnered with companies to offer 16 places for free. Applications are closed for 2017 but keep an eye out for next year’s cohort. This course is not limited to women but aims at increasing diversity in the tech industry through teaching different types of people to code.

Next steps

Don’t stop here!

There are many, many more free coding groups not just focused on women that you can join. Hunt around on Meetup and, of course, trawl search engines and Twitter.

This list is always expanding, so please let me know in the comments or by emailing me if there are any groups you think I should add to this inspiring collection.

Most of these groups make no profit and are usually funded by donations. These donations could be developers volunteering their skills, companies and schools loaning their spaces free of charge, or through financial funding.

If you get to the point where you can give back to help any organisations that have helped you or people like you, consider getting involved!

Now you could try:

• My upcoming Write the Docs workshop in Manchester on making your first contribution to open source documentation using GitHub.
• I strongly recommend heading over to Jenny Brennan’s website for an evolving list of current tech meetups.
• Here’s a calendar of free tech events across the North West.
• Check out Sean O’Mahoney’s comprehensive database of every single tech meetup in Manchester.
• #NationalCodingWeek (follow along on twitter using the hashtag) running every September is a time when you can take advantage of lots of free workshops and events related to coding.

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