This summer, back in the days of heatwaves and hose pipe bans, a range of organisations came together to pilot a Beat the Street game in and around Shrewsbury town centre.

Beat the Street is a free, fun initiative from Intelligent Health that saw Shrewsbury transformed into a giant game.

People took to the streets to swipe a card at 'beat boxes' which were positioned across the town. People took part individually, in a team with their school, workplace, community groups, with friends or family, and walked, cycled, ran, scooted or rolled collecting points as they went.

A leader board and themed weeks and event days for double points provided some interactive highlights during the game's time in the town. 

Link to content below: 28th November 2022 - Beat the Street Learning Event

It’s been the motivation my daughter and I have needed to get out and be active together. We made a real effort to find more boxes and met and chatted to people on the way and enjoyed being more social. We have also found new areas in the town that we didn’t know about before.

The game encouraged me to take up cycling which I'd not done for 20 plus years - I have enjoyed and continued this.

What did we learn?

Thousands of people of all ages took part and well over half completed pre- and post-game surveys providing us with great insight on walking and cycling in Shrewsbury.

• 7,674 players (10% of the population)
• 68,933 miles travelled
• 20 Primary schools took part
• 33 community teams got involved

A learning event was held in November 2022 to share and discuss everything we have learnt so far.

This included hearing from a guest speaker about the success, challenges and results of a Beat The Street game in Derby. We discussed new ideas to help local people get or stay active over the coming months.

Here is the Intelligent Health Report of the Shrewsbury Game

And here are the slides and key messages from the November Event