On Friday 16th January a group of Year 7 and 8 girls were invited to attend the largest tech event for girls in the UK. It was hosted by Accenture and Stemettes at the Sage Gateshead. The aim of the day was to raise the profile of STEM subjects, in particular computing, with girls in the North East of England.

The event organisers recognise that the North East is becoming renowned for its thriving technology industry. They hope to continue this growth by inspiring the next generation of students and raise the profile of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths subjects and careers.

There were 300 girls representing 31 schools in the region for an amazing day filled with inspiring talks from guest speakers including the founder of Stemettes, Anne-Marie Imafidon.

At the event #NEDigitalGirls the girls were shown how to build HTML webpages along with taking part in a range of exciting workshops such as 3D printing, forensic science and technology dance. The girls also had the opportunity to ‘speed date’ young women who were studying or working in STEM.

During the day the girls were put into teams and they had to build a website in their groups on a pop star of their choice. They were taught HTML code and had to use their newly acquired skills to work together to build the site. All of the teams then had to take turns to present their website to the rest of the event attendees, in the auditorium at Sage Gateshead.

A panel of high profile women judges then deliberated over the winning team and one Newminster student, Jessica Ferguson, was part of the winning group. They were fortunate enough to be awarded a Kindle Fire 6 each! A huge congratulations to them and all of the girls that took part in the inspiring day.