A new network of community hubs is being set up across Scotland to give more young people access to coding and artificial intelligence, in an effort to tackle what its organisers call an “unacceptable” gap in provision. The scheme, called Code Xtra, is being launched by the charity Digital Xtra, which has spent the past decade supporting grassroots computing for children.
The charity is blunt about the problem it is trying to solve. “Access to grassroots computing initiatives in Scotland is often a postcode lottery with varying coverage and support. This is unacceptable,” said Kraig Brown, Digital Xtra’s partnerships and development manager. The new hubs are intended to spread opportunities more evenly, particularly to areas that have been poorly served until now.
Four locations will open first: Muirhouse Library in North Edinburgh, Dalkeith Library in Midlothian, Creative Regeneration in Inverclyde and Elgin Library in Moray, with further sites planned later in the year. The choice of community venues, rather than schools alone, is designed to make the sessions easy to reach for families outside the main cities.
The hubs will do more than run classes. They are conceived partly as lending libraries for equipment, allowing schools and community groups to borrow the kit they need, and they will offer curriculum-aligned computing and AI resources, including Lego Education kits. The model combines delivery of sessions, training for educators and community leaders, and access to hardware that many organisations could not otherwise afford.
Digital Xtra has a track record to build on. Over the past ten years it has distributed around 1.1 million pounds through grants, supporting more than 200 grassroots activities that have reached some 60,000 young people. The new hub network is an attempt to turn that scattered funding into a more permanent and visible presence around the country.
The initiative is backed by a mix of industry and education partners, among them the Raspberry Pi Foundation, Raising Robots, the travel company Skyscanner, the investment firm Baillie Gifford and the technology group Cirrus Logic. That combination of tech employers and educational organisations reflects a shared interest in widening the pool of young people with digital skills.
The wider aim is to prepare more of Scotland’s young people for a workforce in which coding and AI are becoming basic literacies rather than specialist niches. Supporters argue that early exposure matters, and that leaving access to chance risks locking some children out of opportunities before they have begun. By placing hubs in underserved communities, Digital Xtra is betting that a more even spread of provision can help close that gap, one library and community centre at a time.
