The popular Beat the Street initiative is an innovative real-life walking game that helps build active communities with improved activity levels and a positive impact on air quality. So far, more than a million people have played the game in the UK and beyond and it is currently taking place in East Renfrewshire and East Kilbride.
The game works by encouraging people to form workplace, school or community teams and to ditch the car. Special sensors called Beat Boxes are placed on lampposts around the town or city for six weeks, which are then tapped by players with cards or fobs in return for points and prizes.
The game was devised by GP Dr William Bird who has devoted his career to encouraging people to lead more active lives and set up Reading-based technology firm Intelligent Health in 2009. The team now works with public sector health organisations and corporate partners in both the UK and around the world to tackle the massive global problem of inactivity. Each scheme is inclusive, low-cost and designed to suit people of all ages and abilities.
Beat the Street has had a positive impact in reducing the number of cars on the roads, helping to ease congestion and therefore helping with air quality; particularly at peak times. Throughout all the Beat the Street programmes delivered in Scotland in 2019, there was an 8% uplift in participants walking or cycling for travel on five or more days per week. Meanwhile, in the London Borough of Hounslow, 1,330 fewer cars and vans were observed travelling along just one Beat the Street target road following the game and in Blaby, Leicestershire, diffusion tubes situated through the district indicated a reduction of a third in air population (Nitrogen Dioxide) outside of schools.
There is now an opportunity to bring Beat the Street to your area throug Air Quality Action Fund. The closing date for this fund is 20th March.
Contact details:
Craig McGarrie
+44 (0)118 935 7371 / 07825 631137
intelligenthealth.co.uk
craig.mcgarrie@intelligenthealth.co.uk
