Last week (24th February) cluster member St. Malachy’s College officially launched the North Belfast Creative Digital Hub. with funding from the Belfast Charitable Society and The James Kane Foundation.

Around 50 guests attended the launch in February including principals and students from neighbouring schools, representatives from our funders, Belfast City Council, local authorities. The Creative Digital Technology Hub was then officially opened by Sir Ronnie Weatherup, President of Belfast Charitable Society. He said:

“Belfast Charitable Society has been supportive of the Digital Creative Hub from its inception. It’s fantastic to see it open and being so well used by local schools. We saw today how engaged the young people were in learning these new digital skills, including coding and game designing, which will no doubt gear them up for the jobs of the future. We will watch with excitement as the Hub grows from strength to strength.”

The Hub is kitted out with high specification hard and software already allowing pupils and staff from schools across the North Belfast Learning Community to develop their digital skills through the use of VR machines, building and programming Lego robots and collaborating through projects in a state-of-the-art gaming arena.

While St Malachy’s College is using this academic year and the next as a demonstration project, they believe that the impact will help them attract further and major investment to build a bigger hub that can be accessed by all North Belfast learners.