Out and about with young adven­tur­ers in the Zuidrand

Thrilling sto­ry­telling

‘A walk through the towns sur­round­ing Antwerp’: would your kids be excit­ed and dying to get going? Prob­a­bly not. But ask them to solve mys­te­ri­ous rid­dles by going on an adven­tur­ous walk… There’ll be no hold­ing them back! The (free) Zuidrand walk­ing app takes this premise and makes it real­i­ty. Our main pro­tag­o­nists are young detec­tives Noor and Lukas, who are tasked with solv­ing fas­ci­nat­ing puz­zles in the neigh­bour­hood. Chil­dren can help them get the job done by col­lect­ing clues in the scenery and heritage. 

Moti­vat­ing game design

The mini detec­tives receive a per­son­alised detec­tive-cer­tifi­cate at the end of the walk/​mission. If they solved the mys­tery that is! We also added a stick­er book to the app as a lit­tle extra moti­va­tion to com­plete the expe­di­tion. Col­lect the stick­ers of all Zuidrand-mys­tery char­ac­ters: the lord of the cas­tle, the wine­grow­er, the police inspec­tor… and even a ghost! Kids hap­py, par­ents hap­py, region­al tourism stake­hold­ers happy.

React Native

The Zuidrand walk­ing app came togeth­er thanks to a text­book exam­ple of co-cre­ativ­i­ty. Four towns from the Zuidrand — Kon­tich, Boe­chout, Edegem en Aart­se­laar — took care of the touris­tic input. Bits of Love devel­oped the con­cept and the app (using the new tech­nol­o­gy React Native). And Paul Nauwe­laerts, a city coun­cil­lor of Edegem, cre­at­ed the char­ac­ter designs and illustrations.

The result? A touris­tic tool that not only turns each walk in the Zuidrand into an adven­ture; it also encour­ages vis­i­tors to return to the area — the app gets updat­ed with new sto­ries reg­u­lar­ly. Rather than sit­ting by and wait­ing to get recog­nised as a touris­tic region by the gov­ern­ment, the towns took faith in their own hands and boost­ed their touris­tic val­ue by them­selves. With a lit­tle help from Bits of Love!

Tried and tested!

We braved stormy weath­er to per­son­al­ly test the walk­ing app. It received full marks from our young detec­tives, despite wind and rain! A few not so young detec­tives con­fessed they had a lot of fun too. Now it’s your turn to get out and explore!