Cheering on the next generation of runners at Queens Park Junior Park Run!

Refugee Week is the world’s largest arts & culture festival celebrating the contributions, creativity and resilience of refugees and people seeking sanctuary. Established in 1998 in the UK, Refugee Week takes place every year around World Refugee Day (20th June) and has since grown into a global movement.

The theme for 2025 is “Community as a Superpower” and GoodGym Brighton took part super-powering the Family event organised by Caroline (independent bookshop Afrori Books) for the Brighton Book Festival, a grassroots festival promoting writers from underrepresented backgrounds.

We helped kids to express their creativity and bring colour to flags, while learning where the refugees come from. Refugees in Brighton primarily come from Ukraine due to the ongoing humanitarian crisis, but also from other regions like Afghanistan and Syria. In the year ending March 2025, the top countries of origin for people seeking asylum in the UK were Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Bangladesh, and Syria.

Brighton and Hove is a city of sanctuary, and GoodGym Brighton is proud to offer our superpower to welcome all!

"The bindweed roots pierce down/ Deeper than men do lie" (Walter de la Mare)

Following an already legendary mission at The Bevy which saw the gang split into idyllic orchard/ pungent backyard areas resonant of heaven/ hell, this week GoodGym Brighton looked forward to all the carefree associations that a bed of roses might suggest in sunny Portslade. However, the latest challenge was no walkover, instead the sisyphean task of removing bindweed, whose rope-like roots can plunge 4m deep, from an attractive rose plot in local open-space gem Vale Park.

No number of hurdles, including sharp thorns, stinging nettles and even an errant deadly nightshade, could deter the vigour of the GoodGym gang's gardening or dim the volume of its high-tempo zeitgeisty chatter. Lucy, from Friends of Vale Park, heralded the group 'angels' and bestowed ice pops in orange, lemon and pink flavours. Meanwhile, the group applauded Olivia's recent milestone of 50 good deeds, and finally celebrated with a collective vertical leap, appropriate in a week when GoodGym founder Ivo Gormley is featuring at a B2B event called Elevate, exploring the link between "physical activity, community connection, and climate action".

Friends of Vale Park is a recently-formed community organisation in Portslade, keen to improve and use the park for the benefit of the local neighbourhood and residents. Formerly a hazardous flint pit and training ground for soldiers in WW1, Vale Park is now a popular leafy space with outdoor exercise facilities, scout hut and book swap chest, and events run by the Friends include an Easter egg hunt, a pumpkin carving workshop and picnics in the park.

On a gently sunny evening, a veritable bevy of Brighton GoodGymers (including a warm welcome to new recruit Mauricio) turned their attention to a regular venue on the GoodGym roster, The Bevy, a community pub/hub, familiar to some as the go-to breakfast venue after the formidably hilly Bevendean Down parkrun. The journey for many involved a 3.5km trot up Lewes Road (allegedly the longest named road in Brighton & Hove), to complete gardening and clearance tasks.

One cohort of the GoodGym team were assigned to the Bevy's allotment, tending to a variety of fruit trees and vegetable patches, weeding and planting the likes of kale, beans and rhubarb. Meanwhile the other contingent tackled a backyard area, hacking away unruly bushes and brambles, and ridding the area of fallen leaves, mounds of soil, buckets of stagnant water and abandoned paraphernalia. As well as finding a rusty electrical device reminiscent of a ghost trap from Ghostbusters, there was under an old beer keg the discovery of a slow worm, the UK's only legless lizard, and apparently a relatively frequent visitor to the Bevy's undergrowth.

Following the transformation of the allotment and backyard, Dave, Shirley and Warren from the Bevy committee were impressed, with one commenting that the outcome of the group's work was "like Christmas", a nod perhaps to GoodGym's predominantly red and white wardrobe. The group was rewarded with an array of tasty snacks from the Bevy kitchen, including cheese scones and Eccles cakes.

The Bevy, for now over a decade, is proudly the only community owned pub on an estate in the UK, keen to support its local neighbourhood amidst cost-of-living challenges. A busy calendar of events for June includes a music and memory cafe for those with dementia, a disability disco, seniors lunch clubs, family days with creative activities for children, and a summer beach party to close the month.

The GoodGym team is happy to support such a cherished community venue, and as the sun set on another completed mission a small Taskforce group duly took the opportunity to visit the Bevy bar, order a glass of the usual, and sketch out its own summer party plans.

Join OUR NEXT SESSION!

11 Brighton GoodGym participants made their way to Palmeira Square to help Friends of Palmeira and Adelaide look after their community green space.

We were very happy to welcome Edwin and Rachel on their very first good deed and they couldn’t pick a better time to join with this task. We all quickly started with racking and collecting leaves and in no time managed to collect 53 very full bags of dried leaves and weed. Leaving Palmeira Square FREE of the occupying dirt.

Our friend Stuart from Friends of Palmeira and Adelaide was very happy with Goodgym contribution. We ran a couple of loops around the square and then we headed to our monthly social organised by our social secretary Michelle that included a challenging quiz with questionable overly long questions and we managed to smash the music round.

This week’s task falls on National Volunteers Week, a week long event in the UK that celebrates and acknowledges the valuable contributions of volunteers across the country.

In my "Life in the UK" exam I was required to memorise what are the British Values and one of them was 'Volunteering' and 'Helping your Community'. Makes me feel proud to be British and I was glad to be part of the team that Freed Palmeira Square from the occupying leaves and looking forward to free every other square as well from any occupation.

A closing note from Stefania, our Area Activator:

“It’s Volunteers Week, fellow GoodGymers.

Please give yourselves a large pat on the back for your extraordinary acts of kindness and generosity. Every Good deed does really make a difference, and every beneficiary in Brighton and Hove is always most grateful to have us all. GoodGym Brighton!

We are a community that cares of other communities - Saying thank you is never enough!"

Proud and satisfied, let’s make OUR NEXT SESSION another great success!

Very well