📅 On Monday we headed over to AbPhab where the young people will be creating and adding a mural to the wall on Wednesday using artwork they have produced. We're there giving Kelly and Sarah a hand to make the area as accessible and ready for Wednesday 🎨

⚙️ After a long day of life admin, logistics and the one or two dreaded spreadsheets, the change of pace, the time outdoors, the fresh air and picking, pulling, lifting were welcomed and much needed ✨

👩🏻‍💻 It's easy to get caught up on the schedules, behind a desk, on our never ending to-do lists. This one hour amongst friends, community folks, was healing and restorative 🫶🏼

𐦂𖨆𐀪𖠋 Here's to time spent in community, together 𐦂𖨆𐀪𖠋

💓💓💓

🌱 Another Sunday afternoon spent at Gale Street Organic Community Garden. How lucky are we?!

👋🏽 Whether its a handful of us or a rowdy bunch, we always come up exhausted from the good work and rocking big smiles in our faces and hearts ❤️‍🔥

🚮 A bit of litter picking
🧅 A lot of planted onions 💦 A lot of love and a bit of water for the seedlings

We are caring for the soil, the place, our body, and mind. We are building community here.

“Doing a creative activity in a group like this is well out of my comfort zone – but you know what? I’m loving it”

Move over Monet! Make way for the GoodGym Art Collective!

Tuesday’s session at AbPhab Youth Club garden was a little different for us.

We swapped barrows for brushes and pick axes for paint as we decorated the new tire planters ready to receive their new plants

Usually full of lots of chat and laughing, this session was much quieter as we enjoyed some peace and quiet together, each focussing on our painting.

The warm evening sun and gentle breeze created the perfect setting for our alfresco creative session.

All agreed the sessions was VERY relaxing and we can’t wait to come back and finish the rest of the tires

The one with the lifts.

This is what GoodGym is all about. Friendship, heavy lifting, connection and sore muscles.

On Saturday we helped Barking Food Forest prepare the ground for the new shed, rainwater tanks and vegetable planters.

Pretty standard stuff, right?

Nah. We lifted the shed from its current position (notice 1st lifted structure) and got down to work with the soil. Level it up, folks! Yes, ax pick your way through that soil. Are your muscles burning? Good sign!

Now, lets lift that water tank (notice 2nd lifted structure) and move it behind the shed! Classic PIVOT! PIVOT! PIVOT! moment. Check out our insta reel for all that GoodGym goodness.

By now, we got 25 minutes left in our community mission. The ground is weedless, quite levelled, the water tank is now comfortably behind the shed and after some slight acrobatics from superstar-volunteer from Barking Food Forest we are all at ground level wondering how much more levelled that does this area needs to be. Apparently much more. As we were.

But, hey is that another water tank at the opposite end of Barking Food Forest? Yes, it is and we want it to sit on top of the first one. After a dynamic risk assessment (fancy H&S terminology, brownie point) we lifted the tank (notice 3rd lifted structure), moved it from one end to another, PIVOT! PIVOT! PIVOT! and up it goes.

Another classic community mission at GoodGym Barking & Dagenham.

So...

...after sitting on my bum all day working from home, the temptation was strong to move to the sofa and do more sitting.

I was tired, it was Monday, but...

...earlier in the day I had signed up to tonight's session with GoodGym B&D. Now I was accountable - to other GoodGymmers, and the host partner AbPhab Youth Club. Doing more sitting was now not an option!

This is the great thing about GoodGym B&D - it provides the motivation needed to get up off your bum and do something active & useful in the gap between work and dinner.

Setting off from Upney Station at 5.45pm, I took a very gentle job through Mayesbrook Park towards AbPhab Youth Club. Struggling at first, once I got to the park I really noticed the blue sky (yes, the sun was still up at 6pm!) and started to feel more energised and alert.

Arriving at AbPhab 20 minutes later, I met fellow GoodGymmer Austin - giving each other a very smug welcome as we knew we'd made the right choice coming to GoodGym tonight. Smug welcome over - Sarah & Kelly from AbPhab briefed us with tonight's task, and revealed there was pizza on offer (result!)

We got stuck into weeding the 10 planters and adding top soil - ready for young people to plant-out their seedlings (beans, peas, carrots and spinach). Task complete, we did a speedy weeding session at the opposite end of the garden, clearing up a very overgrown area.

Wrapping up the session with some selfies, snacks and a nice chat with Deputy Manager Kelly about upcoming tasks.

GoodGym will be back at AbPhab again soon to help replace weed control fabric and pebbles, as well as freshen up the planters with a lick of paint - find out more about these upcoming sessions on the website here

Change of plans? No problem! We tossed our plans out with the litter (carefully bagged and securely tied rubbish sacks 🚮) or piled it alongside the compost 🪱

Life happens, & that’s OK 👌

A wonderful group of women from Gale Street Organic Garden, Elevate Together, and GoodGym came together this Sunday to care for the soil and prep it for spring planting 🌱

So it happened that, on International Women’s Day, four of us gathered to tend to our great mother, Earth 🌍.

Places alone do not create sustainability; people in relationships do🧑‍🤝‍🧑🔗🧑‍🤝‍🧑

Amongst chatting, laughs and hard work, we got the alt. work done. Finishing off with dirty hands and full hearts ❤️‍🔥 There’s something quietly magical about people working together for the benefit of people and the planet.

Fancy doing some vital work to help get the garden ready to welcome the community? Join us next Sunday, 15th March at 2pm.