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.)

It feels like a long time since we did a task at The Place in Sherwood…and it was. January 2025 to be precise! So, almost a whole year later, we returned last night for our latest Wednesday task.

On our last visits, we were helping paint the downstairs rooms as part of the renovation project to turn them into useable art spaces (more about this below). This time, attention was turned to one of the upstairs rooms. Our host, Rachel, runs Mind Alive, offering mindfulness, wellbeing and life support for young people and adults. She has plans to use the room at The Place for her forthcoming relaxing retreats and needed a hand with painting the walls to make it a more inviting and relaxing environment.

Winter 2025 seems to be the season of painting for GoodGym Nottingham, so we were straight in with the rollers and brushes to start covering the walls which had recently been plastered. Tom and Diana had just practiced their best Chuckle Brothers routine by transporting an incredibly long ladder up the staircase; however it was decided we needed more height so Matt kindly popped home to gather another ladder and his trusty extendable roller.

Despite a few issues with coverage, after an hour of painting the walls were already looking refreshed and more white. They will be needing at least another coat though, so we hope to return soon to continue where we left off.

Whilst Diana did a fine job tackling cleaning the paint equipment, the rest of us managed to get a sneaky peak at the rooms that we helped paint a year ago. It was incredible to see the transformation from what were two bare brick disused rooms, to two fantastic art spaces which are being used by local artists and groups. This felt exactly what GoodGym is all about!

A huge thank you to Rachel for hosting us last night and for furnishing us with tea, coffee, mince pies, cakes, bread and bananas! If anyone fancies joining one of Rachel’s wellbeing sessions, the poster can be found in the images and more information on her Facebook page.

Also, a big well done to Florence who just completed her 10th GoodGym task!! And welcome back to Diana who we have not seen for a while.

Lucy, Bozena, Matt and Florence spent Saturday morning helping pack up bags and boxes of Christmas gifts for deprived young people in the Nottingham area. A huge well done for your efforts at this task supporting an amazing charity, Bags of Blessings.

About Bags of Blessings

Carrying Joy, Bringing Hope

We are a charity, local to Nottingham, which distributes donated gifts to deprived young people in the Nottingham area. We put collection boxes in local schools, churches, and businesses, with the request for small, pocket money toys, stationery, books, or items of confectionery. We then sort the donations into age groups, gift wrap each item and put 4 or 5 gifts into a red cotton bag to be distributed to young people aged 0-16 via food banks, homeless and refugee charities or organisations which support disadvantaged children.

We believe that every child deserves to experience the magic of Christmas!