A busy morning at Kingswood Arts Centre. Firstly, the litter left behind by the local foxes had to be collected. Then we carried all the tables and chairs outside ahead of the afternoon’s festivities. Finally, I learnt how to assemble the DJ booth and speakers!

Sam arrived at 10:00 to find no one outside Kingswood House. He knew Paulin and James would be slightly late and then found out Maddie (task owner) would be thirty minutes late too.

Still, despite the later start as Aleksandra, Laura, Cat and then Jess showing up. We managed to get all the main task of sweeping and scrubbing the marble floors in the conservatory room of Kingswood House, which would turn into a mental health space with lots of plants.

Sam, Aleksandra and James all took it in turns to use the power washer to spray off the moss on the patio slabs and the difference was very visible.

Throughout the session, Jess kept on giving news that we hadn't heard like the train line from Beckenham Junction to London Bridge would be closed for five months for structural engineering works and limiting volunteering hours by law to 10 hours a week....

Sam took it all in as the truth until Jess revealed at the end, it was all an April's Fool joke...fooled me twice 😜

This morning, five keen beans went to Kingswood house (former home of "Mr Brovril"), to help Kingswood Arts, who have recently taken over the lease of the building from Southwark council. This is the last full week of preparation that they have before they will open to the public, and there was still lots to do!

We helped by stripping the walls and cleaning everything. There was so much furniture in the room, and we had to keep moving it about to be able to get to all the areas of wall, so this was an extremely active task. (An extra well done to Rose and Diane for running to the task, despite all the hills! 💪🦵)

We also welcomed Aleksandra to her first task 🥳 - she did a meticulous job of cleaning many tables, and well done for picking up the endless task of sweeping all the dust that we were bringing up! 👏

The two hours passed very quickly, and we tidied up in time to leave. As we left, we managed to give away on leaflet to an interested local, and James gave some good touristing tips to Aleksandra of the local area. Community comes in all forms at Goodgym! 💛

Six Good Gymmers arrived at Kingswood House on a chilly Saturday where we were tasked with cleaning the terrace windows. 2 hours later they were gleaming! Well done to Lydia and Theo for completing their first GG mission and massive tanks to Taskowner, Marty, for replenishing us with hot drinks and giving us a quick preview of the building ahead of its official opening in April!

We were back at Kingswood House again this week with Sam joining Gemma and Daryl. The task was to pick up from where we left off last week with weeding.

In the two hours we managed to clear the weed and moss at the front of the building as well as the terrace at the back. The tools that didn’t arrive in time for last week definitely helped with the task!

Six of us met a little later than planned at Kingswood House this morning.

It's an amazing historic building that is being rejuvenated so it can be used as a community art space. Today's task was to weed the paving around the house.

The time we had was shorter than planned so we didn't quite finish it off, but we left it looking a lot neater than before, in preparation for the grand opening in April!