Did you hear the story of the bearded man who turned water into wine? Well, GoodGym Nottingham witnessed a similar miracle last night when our own bearded man, Matt, managed to turn black paint into white before our very eyes!

We were back at the Sherwood Community Centre with host, Louise, who always has a range of fun jobs for us to tackle. Some of us cracked on with painting the downstairs area, including painting over the very Easter-y yellow toilets and stairwell. Meanwhile, a few others popped off to move some chairs up to the art studio before playing paint Tetris putting tins of paint away in the cupboards up there. Once Tetris was complete, they joined the rest downstairs for painting.

Later in the hour, Matt and Nat also nipped back upstairs to help manoeuvre a cupboard which had been installed the wrong way around.

Now for the miracle…

On assessing the available white paint at the start of the evening, most of the group had written off a tub of bluey-black looking paint as unusable. But Matt, convinced the paint could still be saved, set about stirring and shaking it with great determination. Bit by bit the colour changed, and to everyone’s surprise, we had white paint again.

Not quite a miracle, but definitely a reminder that we still have a lot to learn about paint… and that Matt is not the sort of person who takes “no” for an answer.

Well done to this week’s volunteers: Leah, Nigel, Nat, Matt, Khiltee, Louise, Charlie and Rachel. Also, well done and welcome to new GoodGymers Willow and Sophie - we hope to see you again soon!

You can tell we've had one or two painting jobs this winter when GoodGym members are bringing their own overalls!

We were back at the Sherwood Community Centre this week to tackle jobs inside and out! Louise from the centre leda few of us down a labyrinth to apply some fresh white paint to whilst Matt, Natalie and Charlie went outside for some stealth gardening and leaf collection.

Great progress was made by both groups and Louise provided drinks to refresh after a good hour of work on the brushes and rollers.

We also welcomed Louise for her first GoodGym task, we hope you join us again soon!

The Sherwood Community Centre played host to this week’s task in Nottingham. As usual, we were met by the lovely Louise on arrival and, once we’d all navigated the quirky airlock doors, we got to work on various tasks around the building.

Most of us started on clearing up leaves from the grounds using a cute little green trolley and the green plastic leaf picker-uppers which make you feel like a frog! Meanwhile, newcomers Jasmine and Stephanie popped off to do a very special job – measuring the dimensions of the ‘Sherwood Community Centre’ sign which stands on a grassy verge along the road. Once back, they joined Leah and Florence who were moving paint from a storage cupboard up to the art studio.

Towards the end of the hour, Matt, Aj and Nigel moved inside to help with more jobs, including attempting to open a mystery cabinet within a storage cupboard, while other first-timer, Sarah, finished up clearing the leaves outside with Rachel.

We’ll be back at the Sherwood Community Centre next Thursday (not our usual Wednesday). On Wednesday, we’ll be heading to The Place, so there is an opportunity to get TWO GoodGym tasks under your belt next week before the end of the month. Sign up here.

Full commitment from six GoodGymers as we tackled painting the kitchen at Sherwood Community Centre. With shoes off (Matt and Peter) and overalls on (Nigel and Pete) we rolled up our sleeves and got stuck in
Somehow we kept out of each others way and managed to get a coat on all the way round the kitchen. We also welcomed Lisa for her first ever GoodGym task, hopefully the first of many!

We returned to Sherwood Community Centre last night for our latest task. Under skies filled with pretty fireworks, loud bangs and other sounds (more on that later), we met Louise on arrival who set us to work on various exciting jobs around the centre.

Leah, Florence and Tom started off by moving books and radiators around the maze of the building. The books included a diverse range of titles (as shown in the photos), although most were about steam trains and the wars. Once they had finished this job, they moved onto dusting and painting the hallway area, and Tom had the honour of hanging the welcome sign in the foyer.

Also inside the building, Matt turned his hand to a spot of painting while Nigel celebrated his 50th good deed with the important task of painting over the ‘Barbie’ pink wall in the kitchen.

Meanwhile, outside, Peter, Khiltee and I tackled the leaves in the grounds, sweeping, raking and bagging as much as we could in the hour. As well as being treated to a soundtrack of booms from the fireworks, we also noticed that we could hear two very distinct hoots of owls coming from the trees above. As we stopped to listen, along with some of the centre-users who were leaving after their exercise class, we caught a glimpse of one of the owls swoop from one tree to the next. What a privilege!

Thank you to Louise from the Sherwood Community Centre for hosting us and, as always, giving us lots of fun tasks to do. We will be returning next week for more (sign up here).

Now, to the milestones. Congratulations to Nigel on his 50th good deed, Peter on his 60th and Leah on her 80th. Oh, and it was my 150th! 😛

GoodGym Nottingham were in demand this week as we had requests for help in two locations on opposite sides of Nottingham. As we can’t be in two places at once (sadly), we decided to split up and give everyone the option of attending in Sherwood or in the Meadows.

The Sherwood group returned to the Community Centre where we helped out last week as there were still a lot of jobs for us to get stuck into. Once again, Louise was there to welcome us and tell us what needed doing, and we split into 3 groups to tackle each job.

Dayna and Rachel were tasked with moving a pile of plastic matting to one of the grassy areas which will hopefully enable it to be used for additional car parking at events. The mats had clearly not been moved for a long while and had become home to various insects and spiders who will now need to find a new place to dwell. They also had to remove all the old plastic pegs which had held the mats down previously, which proved to be the trickiest and most time-consuming part of the task.

Group 2, Rose and Florence, were tasked with sorting out some of the cupboards inside the community centre. Those of us who were outside did not see exactly what this involved, but the photos suggest it may have involved moving books, suitcases and….bottles of champagne???

Meanwhile, in the back garden of the community centre Peter was tasked with trying to dig out a wooden rail that had seen better days. Unfortunately it was securely concreted in and, whilst one side came loose the other was not to be shifted. Soil replaced and copious amounts of water (not champagne) were drunk!

As the hour drew to a close, everyone helped to lay out the plastic matting before a quick group photo.

Thanks again to Louise at the Sherwood Community Centre for having us and we hope to return again very soon.

We welcomed Florence to her first GoodGym session and Dayna back for her second!