63% of Swindon adults and 32% of children who considered themselves ‘inactive’, increased their activity levels after the return of Beat the Street last year
Beat the Street Swindon 2021 impact report
‘[Beat the Street]helped us explore our new area as a family and gave an extra excitement for my children to extend our walks. When stuck for something to do Beat the Street was our default. We adore this game and hope it continues.” – Female, aged 30-39
The effect of Beat the Street
The impact of the third Beat the Street Swindon game shows that the interactive physical activity challenge helped thousands of local people get more active.
Swindon played the game three times and the 2021 game achieved the highest number of miles so far. A total of 29,367 people (14% of the population) took part. They travelled 319,875 active travel miles over the six-week game between 15 September and 27 October 2021.
This time around, 16,790 people were surveyed on their levels of activity before the game. After the game, 12,082 people gave feedback enabling organisers to measure the impact of the game on their behaviour. The results show that Beat the Street helped local people who do little activity become more active.
Funding and partnerships
Swindon Borough Council funded Beat the Street working in partnership with Wiltshire and Swindon Sport (WASP), and Swindon Healthy Schools.
The programme also aimed to promote active and sustainable modes of travel. Taps on Beat Boxes show that the game encouraged people to use active modes of travel to get to school and work. Further, 34% of all activity undertaken was between 8-9am and 3-4pm.
Another aim of Beat the Street is to promote overall mental wellbeing. In particular in the face of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Participants also completed questions about their mental health and wellbeing. The findings demonstrated that the initiative has led to improved mental wellbeing for adults. Participants reported increased feelings of happiness and reduced anxiety.
Quote/unquote
Councillor Brian Ford, Swindon Borough Council’s Cabinet Member for Adults and Health, said: ‘Beat the Street created a real buzz in our community last autumn. It got thousands of people up on their feet and moving.
As well as having positive benefits on residents’ health, the game also encouraged people to ditch the car and find more environmentally-friendly ways to travel around the Borough.
‘To help residents maintain the healthy lifestyle habits they adopted during the game, we’ve launched the Active Swindon Challenge app. ‘This brand new fitness app allows residents to take part in time limited challenges and record their journeys around the Borough. And, above all, stay active during the winter months. The app is free to download on iOS and Android devices in the App Store and through Google Play.
I’d encourage anybody who took part in Beat the Street to give our new app a go and build positive habits that last a lifetime.’
Beat the Street players will get a six-month follow up survey in March 2022. That will help assess long-term behaviour change and raise awareness of local provision to help keep people active.
The previous two games delivered in Swindon were successful in achieving behaviour change amongst players. In 2018, 31,892 participants took part and in 2019, 25,979 people took part.
To find out other ways you can stay active and reduce your effect on the environment, visit the Be the Change webpages:www.swindon.gov.uk/bethechange
https://swindonian.me/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Swindon-post-game-report-V2.pdf