We are addressing here a well-known challenge: our world is getting increasingly digital and it is those who can manipulate and create technology who are able to shape it. For most young people digital technology is an everyday part of life and many of them are eager to learn how to creatively engage with it. In view of this fact it is surprising that there are so few learning opportunities for this group of young enthusiasts who are usually left alone when they venture into authoring their own ‘apps’. In Poland there are very few learning spaces for young digital makers and none in the region of Wadowice. The UK is leading developments in this field, still the learning experiences on offer are much below demand. Wavemaker is the only such initiative in their area. Our main aim is to engage young people in collaborative digital making and foster their technical and social competencies relevant for employment. We are addressing two current call priorities.- Horizontal priority: open and innovative education, training and youth work, embedded in the digital era- Youth field priority: promoting high-quality youth workOur main target group are young people with fewer opportunities, particularly those who:- go to school but have very few opportunities to get involved in extracurricular learning activities due to their location, accessibility, price, etc.- finished school but neither continue education nor work; this group is particularly hard to reach with an educational offer, still it includes a large number of young people deeply submerged in a digital world.We will provide a range of experiences for the young people that are innovative as a whole. We will give open access to a social learning space with an informal workshop atmosphere distinct from school environment. The young participants will be able to manipulate both hardware and software to co-create their digital laboratory. They will co-author an online platform testing various plug-ins to customise it to their needs and preferences. They will create apps with support of qualified staff and colleagues who already work in the industry. This direct contact with professionals will help them better understand career routes in this field and their own progression. The support we plan is thus complementary and innovative at the same time: usually ICT learning opportunities for young people, if available, include onsite computer workshops teaching specific technical skills and online materials for self-teaching. We aim at a much wider range of benefits than those gained from (self) development of technical expertise. Our baseline research findings highlight this point: progression into digital creativity with prospects to real jobs means not only mastering a set of specific technical skills but also developing social competencies in a community of practice.Besides offering digital making activities in both our centres we will develop the following results.- Online platform: the platform will serve as a learning and communication tool for young digital makers and facilitators from Poland and the UK thus bridging the two sites. All the digital objects developed by the participants will be shown on the platform as well as links to external resources supporting the learning.- Community of practice: face-to-face and online communication around a set of shared interests will lead to emergence of an authentic community of practice. Through the process of collaborative learning the young people will have an opportunity to develop themselves both professionally and socially.- Digital stories: there is evidence that an ability to imagine what real careers look like is essential in planning one’s own pathway. Young people need to relate their emerging identity to role models in the field they are engaged in. We will go beyond facilitating face-to-face encounters with such young creative and successful people who may serve as role models and encourage them to share their career experiences in the form of digital stories.- Digital club toolkit: there is high demand, both in Poland and the UK, to create new or scale up existing social learning environments for young digital makers as the current number of opportunities is lacking when compared to the levels of interest. We will distil effective approaches from our initiative and other good practices and present them to educators and youth workers.- Research report: we will explore young people’s progression into digital creativity and jobs in Poland, where there are very few datasets on this, and present conclusions to stakeholders in the field of youth work and education. It will include an analysis of biographical interviews with Polish young digital makers at the threshold of their career in different sectors of IT industry with an aim to examine how they developed competencies needed for work in this sector.