15 GoodGymers ran out to Valley View Gardens ready to get stuck into some gardening at the YMCA… but sometimes plans have other ideas. We’re pretty good at going with the flow (and the run).

First stop: a quick drop-off of rescued food from Olio—because sharing is caring and no good food should go to waste.

With our original task off the table, we didn’t leaf it there. Instead, we branched out to the nearby Round Hill Conservation Area. We were only there last week, but turns out the weeds didn’t take the hint. We tackled overgrown trees, gave the pavements a good de-weed, and helped make the area safer by clearing trip hazards.

Good to see familiar faces, Philippa and Michael, and returning, fair weather 🌞 GoodGymers, who keep powering our amazing Brighton Area with their Good will. Welcome back Amy and Cagdas.

Our donation of food, sandwiches and pastries, was a huge hit at the YMCA today. It was a tough day for many, expecially the residents and staff, and we’re happy we could help lift their spirits.

All in all, a tree-mendous effort from everyone—proof that even when plans change, GoodGymers always find a way to make a difference 🌱

We will be back here next week!

On a sunny but chilly Tuesday evening, 12 GoodGymmers made their way up (and up and up...) to St Luke's Primary School in Hanover, for our annual task of helping to get the props ready for the Children's Parade, which kicks off the Brighton Festival.

This year the parade is themed on the National Year of Reading, and the children of St Lukes chose the book "The Cave Baby" for inspiration - complete with a giant mammoth puppet. However, we kept our hands dry from papier-mache this time round, and were instead tasked with cutting out as many paper leaves as possible - to be used for the children's cave baby costumes.

We were given a blue-peter style demonstration by our host Lara, and after a hunt for left-handed scissors and some ingenious card-folding - we set about drawing and cutting.

We posed for a quick photo proudly holding our leaves (points to our lovely first timerDerek for creativity) and then headed to the park to share some delicious homemade Tiramisu to celebrate our own Stefania birthday!

Tonight’s GoodGym Brighton crew rolled up their sleeves for one of our favourite long-standing partnerships — a deep clean at the brilliant Brighton & Hove Food Partnership Community Kitchen. We love supporting BHFP’s mission around food waste, food poverty, healthy eating and community connection, and this session was the perfect blend of elbow grease and good vibes.

What we got up to

• With Jo welcoming us in, we split into teams and got straight to work:
• Ovens: scrubbed, polished and restored to their shiny best
• Cupboards: emptied, tidied, reorganised and generally shown some love
• Windows, tables and chairs: wiped down until they gleamed
• General chaos → calm: the whole kitchen got a refresh thanks to everyone’s effort

There’s something strangely satisfying about transforming a busy community space back into tip-top condition — and as always, the chat, teamwork and laughter made the time fly. Those who finished their tasks had the opportunity to do some “stickering” – which was essentially branding takeaway bags with BHFP stickers. It proved a good way to wind down. After we had finished, a huge number of us went to the Lord Nelson for the pub quiz and our monthly social. We hope to see the two newcomers, Lucy and Derek, who joined us this evening again real soon!

A little bonus knowledge

Jo reminded us that GoodGymers can get a discount on Community Kitchen classes — a great excuse to sharpen your cooking skills or try something new. If you’re curious, just ask Jo for details next time. And if you want to stay in the loop with BHFP projects, events and those coveted LatePlates last-minute class discounts, you can sign up to their newsletter here: https://bhfood.org.uk/get-involved/sign-up/

A big well done

Huge thanks to everyone who came along and helped make the Community Kitchen sparkle. It’s always a pleasure supporting BHFP, and we left knowing the space is ready for the next round of community cooking, learning and connection.

Until next time — great work team!

For this week's task, the unique group that is GoodGym Brighton congregated at One Church Florence Road, a place of worship and one-stop shop community venue, for a cleaning mission in their community kitchen. From this kitchen on every third Sunday a meal is prepared for those who are homeless, vulnerably housed or at risk of isolation, which members of GoodGym Brighton are often on hand to support.

The team were welcomed by Stefan who outlined the scale of the task when he revealed that the kitchen hadn't had a single deep clean since the New Year. A wide range of activities were divvied up and the GoodGym squad tackled them all in typical no-nonsense route one fashion: washing/ drying up, rationalising shelves/ pans/ utensils, cleaning ovens/ surfaces/ floors and confronting the fridge-freezer. Hefty items had to be removed from the kitchen and then returned post-clean, including blenders, large bottles of oil and 25kg bags of flour, which provided additional weight training for some. Among the one-off finds in the kitchen was a tupperware tub of lentils used in pastry baking to avert a soggy bottom, familiar to many attempting long runs/ walks in the recent inclement weather.

Capturing the latest one-off moment in the GoodGym Brighton story, the gang posed for the post-task group photo in an adjacent hall often used for a variety of educational purposes, which hosted a collection of xylophones, a paper mache Where the Wild Things Are-esque monster, and an emotions colour wheel tacked to the wall. With Stefan delighted that the kitchen was left in such a sparkling condition the group headed home deserving of a spectrum of happy-coloured emotions including successful, valued and inspired.

In a burst of inspiration, GoodGymer Sam penned this lovely poem. Enjoy the rhymes:

Feeling Complete

Rubber gloves slip snug on my hands, A toilet brush waits for careful plans. Where others groan, I bend with glee, Scrubbing the bowl till it shines for me. The swirl of water, the steady sweep, A rhythm of work both calm and deep. Graffiti cleared, floors bright and true, A quiet craft I can take pride in, too. The scent of cleaner, sharp yet sweet, A fragrance that makes the task complete. Each motion steady, circles tight, Turns hidden corners clean and bright. Some wrinkle noses, some retreat, But here I find the work complete. A task that others choose to flee Brings pride and stillness home to me. So let the gloves embrace my hands, And brushes trace the path I planned. For in this work, both strange and sweet, I find myself, and feel complete.

This report was co-written with contributions from GoodGymers Ben and Sam.

Another GoodGym community mission complete! What next at GoodGym Brighton?

This week, a hard-as-nails GoodGym contingent made their way to the Brighton Community Workshop in Kemptown, billed on its website as a "collective garden shed", a kind of tool nirvana bursting at the seams with everything from nut drivers to ratchets. An organisational task was on the table, for the team to bring order to chaos, to metaphorically extract the spanners from the works.

The team were welcomed by Pete Ranson, director of the workshop (and also recognised by some as director of the East Brighton parkrun), who quickly mapped out the evening's assignments. One group was to rationalise onto various shelves different lengths of wood so that visitors to the workshop could easily be offered the sweet spot size they would need for their respective DIY projects. The other group were focused on categorising into tupperware containers a impressive variety of screws, nuts and other tighteners/ fasteners, as well as many other miscellaneous items, including alum keys, picture hooks, and a 22cm ruler.

Going at it hammer and tongs, the GoodGym gang soon recognised that the task required mental acuity as well as physical agility, but as usual rose to the challenge and the workshop was duly transformed. There remained plenty of potential for a sequel visit however with much still to sort, and Pete offered some a quick tour down to the cellar, revealing further boxes and vertiginous piles of items to be catalogued.

The Brighton Community Workshop & Tool Library opened in Kemptown in 2022, following a previous iteration as part of Revaluit in Old Steine, and offers a creative space for crafting and building, skills workshops (including regular arts and crafts sessions) plus an expansive tool library that functions like a book library. As the session wound to a close, and the team filtered out to clink glasses at a social at the Sidewinder, Pete outlined the workshop's aims to empower people with skills and to promote a circular economy of sharing, reusing, repairing and recycling. He added that in 2020 man-made mass began to exceed overall biomass in the world. Humans are making a lot of undue waste, he was saying, and that's a point that needs drilling home.

What a great organisation for first comers Ellie and Harry. Welcome to Goodgym Brighton!