Beat The Street


This year saw 68 schools compete against other schools within their area of Swindon to gain the highest number of points, with one leaderboard for total points and another for the average points. Haydonleigh Schools’ 949 members achieved the highest number of total points with 392,650 and travelled a distance as far as New Zealand.


Over a six-week game that took place between 25th September and the 6th November, Beat the Street transformed Swindon into a giant game where residents formed teams and walked, cycled and ran around their community tapping special Beat Boxes on lampposts in order to score points.


Beat the Street was delivered by Intelligent Health and WASP with funding from the National Lottery on behalf of Sport England and Swindon Borough Council with the intention of increasing levels of walking and cycling in Swindon.


More than 25,900 residents took part in the physical activity competition with schools, community teams and workplaces competing to see who could travel the furthest.


Over the six-week period the people of Swindon racked up an impressive total of 252,127 miles! Enough to travel round the equator 10 times.


Haydonleigh will be spending their winnings on new sports equipment. Talking about the way that Beat the Street has impacted the school, they said that it “has really brought our school community together. We have really enjoyed taking part and have held evening glow stick walks including one on firework night, and a family race competition to see who could do a circuit of beatboxes in the quickest time.’’ ‘’We have definitely seen a difference in the amount of congestion and cars around our school gates during Beat the Street and are hoping to encourage parents and children to keep walking to school even though Beat the Street is over.’’


This change in activity levels has additional benefits in the classroom, “Children who walk to school have been found to have higher academic performance in terms of attention/ alertness, verbal, numeric and reasoning abilities. Lower levels of stress during the school day.”


Even though the game has finished we hope it has encouraged people to rethink how they travel around, and players have found that walking or cycling to school is a fun, free alternative to using their car. Getting a burst of activity into the school day though a daily mile is a great way to continue the good work that Beat the Street has started.


For support and ideas on how your school can remain active after Beat the Street contact Stuart@wiltssport.org or for information about Active Travel, contact Kathryn Hamilton at phteam@swindon.gov.uk 14 Wiltshire and Swindon Relay


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