Welcome to Gaynor for their first ever GoodGym Manchester Task! Great to meet you briefly and hope to see you at another session in the future!

This evening, we collected any tins, cans, jars, and other non-perishables from the cupboards or the shop, to drop off at the big ASDA in Hulme as a donation point for Manchester South Central food bank. We had lots of peanut butter, jam, tinned meat & veg, rice pudding, UHT milk, pasta sauce, and added the carrier bags in for good measure.

With a 2.3 km distance from the meeting point to the drop-off point, Pavel and Ben did their own version of the Farmer's carry with bags in each hand and a hefty backpack each to take the load past Parakeet Parkway. Excellent Monday evening workout to get a bit of a sweat in the May sunshine.

Lots of chit chat about a possible GoodGym app, marketing GoodGym, camping, plus much more. Much lighter walk on the way home too!

As a warm up for the Great British Spring Clean coming up, Pavel and Ben made the brisk stroll from St Peter's Square to Sackville Street and a green space often littered with rubbish from passers by and passing cars.

In all, we collected 7 full refuse sacks plus a stack of large pieces of cardboard from an area known as Greek Street as one of the sites for Ardwick Climate Action. Included in the haul was a range of:

• cans and drink bottles
• unused tampons
• fast food packing (McDonald's and Archies prime culprits)
• packaging and wrapping
• laughing gas canisters
• cutlery (some of it looked like Uri Geller had been using it...)

After an hour or so, we cleared the area and piled the bags in a reasonable spot to be collected by Keep MCR Tidy and the council to collect this week. Hopefully, removing litter will encourage others to look after the area and not drop their discarded waste for others to deal with.

Keep an eye on upcoming GoodGym MCR tasks with an array of litter picking sites on offer

GRIT Studios have been going for 3.5-4 years with bases in Stockport and a studio in Manchester, Deansgate. now they have a space for "Gritters" in Salford. An old natwest bank in Salford shopping centre has been left empty and unused for 6 years(!) so hopefully the space can be put to better use!

Upon arrival, it was clear it would be a big task. With builders in this week to do bits of plastering and filling in holes in the wall and ceiling, the space was safe to use.

Jordan and Stefanie donned their overalls to fill in walls and plaster, including over a disused lift shaft with paint to give a clean slate for incoming artists 🎨🖌. Pavel, Gameel, and Peter helped scrape and clear paint from the windows, clear large items as rubbish🗑, and clear rooms of any bits left from previous incumbents. Ben helped scrape paint, paint over removed wallpaper, and clean windows🪟.

After a couple of hours, we had done what we could with a likely repeated trip back to finish any specific tasks with opening days not too far away.

It was really great to help out and good numbers to get a lot done in a short amount of time. Hope you enjoyed the task and see you soon!