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.