it was a return visit to The Place Sherwood for 10 intrepid Goodgymers to apply a second coat to the walls ( though it was so toasty inside no second coats were needed to be worn!) and smash through our January Challenge pledge! After Tom and Nigel wrestled the ladder upstairs it was brushes and rollers at the ready as we got stuck in. We had great encouragement from our task owner Rachel who made sure we were fuelled up with plenty of hot chocolate and biscuits. Proving that many hands make light work Giovanna (making her Goodgym debut - welcome), Peter, Leah, Heidi, Aj, Florence, Khiltee and Phil soon had that second coat of paint on leaving enough time for Matt to set to with the filler. With still more to do it looks like we will be back but for now it’s in with tomorrow’s task, the last of the January Challenge!

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.

I don't think we've ever had this many people attend a session! An amazing FOURTEEN of us descended on Mark at The Meadows Food Bank for an evening of lifting, sorting and cleaning. As usual, he'd come up with a nice big list of things for us to do, which we absolutely smashed (if I do say so myself).

Newcomers Heidi, Alex and Phil joined our old hands Hannah, Florence and Khiltee for the biggest job of the night – sorting piles and piles of clothing donations to find wintery clothes suitable to give out to the food bank's service users in the near future and get everything else ready to be passed on to charity shops to raise more funds.

Meanwhile, Peter, Matt, Aj and another newcomer, Neil, were on the lifting and shifting, moving bags out to Mark's car and bringing stock down from upstairs to top up the shelves.

Nigel and Leah were on sweeping and hoovering duty all across the stockroom and the community cafe. I'd never thought about it before, but Henry the Hoover is wonderfully GoodGym colour-coded.

Finally, Rachel and Dayna were on bagging up more of the mini soaps and body washes. We still haven't got to the bottom of them, despite Matt's best efforts.

We just about had time for a group photo (minus Matt, sorry!) before heading our separate ways. Welcome to all our new members, hope to see you at another task soon!

The GoodGym Nottingham volunteers came together on 10th December for their annual festive social at Bustler, Sneinton Market.

With rounds of mulled wine, other alcoholic and non-alcoholoc beverages, and tasty food from Bustler's streetfood stalls, we marked another year-full of helping organisations and projects around Nottingham and various milestones achieved.

As always, conversation and debate flowed, with the key questions of the night:

"How is it that several group members had not seen Home Alone and is this really as shocking as some thought?"

"What is the best apple?"

"When is a berry not a berry?" (for the benefit of those not at the previous years Christmas social)

A big thank you to everyone who attended (and to Rose and Vytautas who made a brief surprise appearance before joining their rival party). We hope everyone has a lovely, relaxing break and we're looking forward to more good deeds in 2026 (we've already got loads of tasks booked in, check them out and sign up here.)