What We Got Up To at Norwich Games Festival!
Earlier this week a few of our fantastic mentors travelled over to Norwich Game Festival for an awesome day full of coding! Here's what we got up to...
Earlier this week a few of our fantastic mentors left The Code Zone HQ and travelled over to Norwich Game Festival for an awesome day full of coding! We had an amazing time, and met loads of brilliant coders, so we’re here to tell you all about what we got up to.
In our Norwich sessions, our coders and gamers were introduced to the world of Augmented Reality!
What is Augmented Reality, you may be asking? It’s a unique experience that overlays digital content onto the real world. This means that coders were able to meet our virtual robot, Rob, and interact with it by building code.
Rob was able to carry out tasks, solve puzzles, and traverse the world through the power of AR!
For those that wanted something more physical, we also brought our coding robot Codey along.
Codey is a super cute panda-like robot (well...it could be a cat - there's a great debate rumbling with the children!), and through the power of programming it can drive around or even be used as a controller to play games and even sumo wrestle!
After our sessions, Paul and Ashley watched presentations by local games studios Moss Monkey Games and Fairer Games, learning what a power house of game dev talent there is in Norwich.
It was really exciting to meet locals and discuss what The Code Zone could be up to in Norfolk to support the Game Dev community. (watch this space!)
Thank you to Norwich Games Festival for having us, we had an amazing time!
It was great meeting new coding and gaming fans, and we were so impressed with all of their incredible new coding ideas.
If you want to code with Rob and Codey but didn’t manage to make it down to the festival, never fear!
You can hack, mod, and explore AR in our in-person clubs based in and around Cambridgeshire, or join us online for some Game Dev fun!
Click here to find a club near you!
About The Code Zone
We run coding clubs for children aged 6 to 16. Live online clubs are open to children anywhere in the UK, and our in-person clubs run across Essex, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk. Over 1,000 children are enrolled.
A live club is one hour a week, in a group of no more than six, with the same DBS-checked, STEM-certified mentor.
Children build their own games rather than working through a set course, and levels move down as readily as up so the work always fits. More than a third of our members are autistic or have ADHD, based on what parents tell us when they join.
Most children start in Scratch or MakeCode and move to Python and TypeScript when they are ready. Mentors write a note on every child after every session, so we know when somebody is ready to move up or would rather stay put. Nothing is forced.
In 2025 we received the Autism Inclusion Award from the National Autistic Society, and in 2026 we were ranked second in the UK in Club Hub UK’s Top 100 Children’s Activity Providers, scored by five independent judges on safeguarding, inclusivity and community impact. Every mentor is DBS-checked and STEM-certified.
More like this
The blog is in two halves. Guides are the evergreen explainers written by the mentors who teach the clubs, covering the questions parents actually ask: what comes after Scratch, how to support a coding-mad child when you cannot code yourself, and what works for autistic and ADHD children.
Club news is the other half, and it is where posts like this one live: game jams, Minecraft builds and weekly roundups, written up by whoever ran the session. Neither is marketing. If you want to know what an hour actually looks like before you book anything, club news is the more honest read of the two.
The first session is a free taster and we do not ask for card details. Book a free taster session, see what it costs, or read about support for neurodivergent children.
