A rare Friday evening task saw Matt, Rachel and new GoodGymer, Mohamad, head to the Greenway Centre in Sneinton.

The centre is the new home of IMPACD CIC a fantastic community organisation which works to reduce isolation and improve wellbeing through inclusive creative activity. This includes dance, drumming, mosaic art and photography classes for all ages.

We met Amanda on arrival who filled us in on the plans and immediate priorities. The property used to be a boxing club so their team had already made a huge transformation, but it faced a few on-going challenges including a water leak from the storm the previous night.

Due to the flooding, we couldn't help with laying the new floor which was originally planned, so instead we spent the first hour in the courtyard area at the back of the centre, clearing and sweeping up rubble and moving it to the bin out the front.

Next, Matt, Mohamad and one of the centre's students, Alex, set upon dismantling a wooden awning structure that had seen better days. It was thought that this may be contributing to the water getting into the building. Meanwhile, Rachel removed a bunch if stinging nettles from around the yard. The longterm plan is to turn the yard into a sensory play area and we hope to be able to help more with this going forward.

As the light began to fade, and after a brief coffee/tea break, the team spent the rest of the time scraping some of the loose paint from the shutters at the front of the building. They were due to be painted by a graffiti artist in the coming days and we look forward to seeing the finished result!

It was great to meet Amanda (and her two very cute sausage dogs!) and to find out more about IMPACD CIC. We hope to book in another date soon to help them continue the big renovation project.

Welcome to Mohamad who joined for his first GoodGym task.

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!

Our latest task took us back to the Edwards Lane community Centre for the session we’d postponed from January due to illness.

We welcomed Caroline and Charlie back for their second GoodGym tasks, and also Nat who hasn’t been for a while. Joined by Leah, Matt, Nigel and Rachel, the group met Hya on arrival who set us to work on….you guessed it….painting!

Painting seems to have been the theme of this autumn and winter for GoodGym Nottingham, kick starting with our last visit to Edwards Lane back in October when we painted the sports hall. Since then, we’ve refreshed and spruced up various walls and fences in the local area. No complaints though, the group seem in their happy place with brushes and rollers in hands and the conversation and banter flows aplenty during these kinds of tasks.

This time we had the convenient job of painting the ladies’ and accessible toilets at the community centre. We split into 2 teams – pink and blue - and got to work. After an hour, we’d managed to get a large chunk of both loos done and they were definitely looking brighter and fresher, though a second coat and some neatening up is needed. Feeling flushed with success, we piled into the accessible toilet for a quick group photo.

Although we were disappointed not to be able to finish the painting, we understand that Hya’s husband will be going in to pick up where we left. Hopefully we will be back soon to help out with more jobs around the Edwards Lane Community Centre and to admire the loos if we need to spend a penny!

Somehow lightning has struck twice and we've not had to contend with the incessant rain on this mammoth task!

This time we were joined by Charlie on his first ever GoodGym session and Jen who we borrowed from Portsmouth for the evening. And a groundsheet to protect the stonework – whaddya know, we've learned!

With a smaller group, we clubbed together and got a good chunk further along the railings. It's really starting to look good!

We'll be back at the end of March, so sign up now. Will it be a hattrick of dry evenings?