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!

A Happy New Year from GoodGym Nottingham who met for their first task of the year yesterday. Unfortunately, our planned indoor task had been cancelled due to illness, but not to be deterred or put off by the chilly weather, we decided to meet for a spot of litter picking around the Carrington area of Nottingham.

We met at the Carrington Community Garden where we did several tasks in the summer. It was fully dark and not much above freezing, and it seemed impossible to believe that we were there at the same time, in daylight, and sweating buckets in shorts and vests just a few months ago!

After a quick sweep of the Community Garden itself, we split into two groups and headed off to see what we could find to fill our purple bags before the cold got the better of our fingers and toes. Peter, Tom and Nigel went in the direction of the Pirates Park and St John’s churchyard, whilst Leah, Florence, Khiltee, Matt and Rachel ventured towards the underpass and shops at Carrington. We managed to fill four bags of litter overall, including Matt’s best find of a military style hat complete with badge.

We could have definitely carried on picking had we not started to freeze a little and had we also not agreed to reconvene after 45 minutes to head to the pub (a little reward for our efforts). After a quick photo, we waved goodbye to Nigel and the rest of us popped into the local for a cheeky drink to welcome in 2026 and to debate the pros and cons (?) of having a birthday on 31st December – happy belated birthday to Matt!

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!