Carrie Anne Philbin’s work recognised by British Film Institute (BFI) National Archive

Geek Gurl YouTube creator and STEM educator, Carrie Anne Philbin MBE, is currently a Medwards PhD student, whose work explores children’s agency and creativity in physical computing. Recently, some of her early online video work, aimed at educating young people, and particularly girls, was added to the British Film Institute (BFI) national archive as part of a project preserving online moving image works from UK creators. Her video ‘How to Code Music with Raspberry Pi & Sonic Pi’,  features in the new BFI Replay collection, showcasing 50 online moving image works from the archive. BFI Replay is a free platform for everyone in the UK to access content from the BFI National Archive and learn more about their screen heritage and the history of moving image.

Carrie Anne said:

“When I made those early videos, I was thinking about how to open up computing to more young people, especially those who rarely saw themselves reflected in it. Seeing that work preserved by the BFI National Archive is both humbling and affirming. It reminds me that these experiments in teaching and learning still matter, and that they continue to inform the research I’m doing today.”

Carrie Anne launched her YouTube channel Geek Gurl Diaries in 2012, driven to inspire more young girls to learn about technology, so that future female tech workers wouldn't, as she did, keep finding themselves 'the only girl on the team'. The channel offered simple, fun and easy-to-follow tutorials on computing, coding, electronics, robotics and more. Each video presented practical applications to suit her teen and pre-teen audience: fun Minecraft hacks, making an HTML comic strip. The chosen video is one of a number of tutorials on coding with simple one-board minicomputer Raspberry Pi.

In 2017, Carrie Anne retired Geek Gurl Diaries and embarked on a 40-part introduction to computer science, in partnership with the YouTube channel CrashCourse.

Geek Gurl Diaries won Philbin the mobile network Talk Talk's 'Internet Heroes' award in 2013; the same year she published her first book, Adventures in Raspberry Pi. She has been Executive Director of Learning and Advancement at the Institute of Imagination, and Director of Educator Support at the Raspberry Pi Foundation. She was awarded an MBE in 2020 in recognition of her work in computing education. She is currently pursuing a PhD at the Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre within the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge, focusing on physical computing approaches to teaching computer science. She also serves as Mature Students’ Officer within the MCR.