Brighthelm Centre is a well-established community venue situated in the heart of Brighton. Our first ever beneficiary charitable organisation, a short run from our meeting point at the Victoria Statue in Brighton.

GoodGym’s call today was to make the space much nicer for its community groups and tenants, and so we did by tuning our GoodGym steps with the Zumba choreography of ZumbaWithMon Class, which is on here every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday!

We tackled the centre’s stairwells with a double GoodGym action: by deep cleaning the steps and making the windows shined top down and bottom up, and vice versa.

Nice bumping in the musicians from Water Bear College of Music and other community groups who were busy in the rooms upstairs. This gave me a sense of belonging to all those organisations that we serve with our active GoodGym volunteering work. And, it just keeps resonating a mutual devotion for each other community charitable mission, and enduring respect for all the diversity, time and energy that we all donate while contributing towards a greater Good in our city. This is Active Kindness, among each other and all.

Today we kept our running short to rest (a bit) our legs prior a busy four sessions on this weekend, 24-25th February. Click here to sign up on what’s on in Brighton area.

Brighton GoodGym-ers will be volunteering and/or running at our local parkruns and at the Brighton Half to embrace our cause while engaging our hearts in memory of some fellow GoodGym-ers. We are also fundraising for Mind.

Our dear Frances well remembers our first ever GoodGym group session here, at Brighthelm Community Centre in the primary school garden. Brighthelm Community Centre is a popular and well-established community venue in the heart of Brighton, hosting a range of local charities and social enterprises sharing this mission:
“Brighthelm seeks to be a vibrant hub of hospitality, worship, learning, and action, pointing the way towards a world in which all living beings flourish together in the peace and love of God.”
So did GoodGym! – We flourished our best while wedding, sweeping, and picking up any unwanted litter to turn the area in better place for all. Great to see back Rebecca and Jason, and to share some ideas for the coming up GoodGym community and group sessions at the B&H Take Part Festival of Sports. Zumba dancing music in the background tuned our yesterday group session, which ended up with a fitness run up and around nearby.

This group run was a tale of two tasks, with half the crew shovelling and the other half scrubbing. After meeting in Victoria Gardens and congratulating Abion both 50 good deeds and a new Parkrun PB, the squad ran up the hill past various lush-smelling restaurants to reach Brighthelm Gardens. Here five folk headed round the corner to scrub the windows at Brighton's Community Kitchen, while the rest of us surveyed a small mountain of soil, shovels in hand.

Shovelling said soil into place had been a previous task for Brighton GoodGym but now it had to be moved to a new planter, allowing the neighbouring music school some outdoor space for their students. The crew wielded shovels and wheelbarrows enthusiastically, and with the Brighthelm team mucking in we soon had the new planter filled and ready to receive its crop of tomato plants.

Meanwhile over at the compost heap more earth moving action occurred as Abi and Shermanturned two huge piles of compost.

(Brighthelm was also the location of Brighton Goodgym's very first task back in July 2017 which you can read about here. And also coming full soil-cle was Rebecca from Lambeth who was attending a Brighton group run for the first time but had been present at Tara's very first Goodgym experience in Lambeth also in 2017!)

But the day's labour wasn't over yet- after running back down to the start point, Tara led us in a brief but brutal interval workout to round the session off. Since that first task four years ago, Brighton's GoodGym runners have completed hundreds of tasks and engaged with dozens of community projects around the city- here's to four more years!

Now that’s what I call a great Goodgym task!

Tonight we headed back to the Brighthelm Centre, where it all began in July 2017. Back then the heavens opened and we all got soaked to the skin as we layed the wood chip path in the nursery garden. Tonight we had perfect weather and this time any soaking was from the sweat of some good hard labour!

The Brighthelm community centre is set in a city centre garden that is maintained by an amazing team of volunteers. They do a wonderful job in challenging circumstances as the garden takes a lot of footfall and is used by a variety of people not all of whom have behaviour that is social!! Occasionally they have a task that needs an injection of hard and fast labour and that’s when they call Goodgym!

Tonight’s task was twofold. Half the group worked on taking the top layer of turf off a steep bank that will eventually be seeded with wildflowers. There was quite a technique to this, cutting the turf into squares and sliding the spade underneath to remove just the top layer of turf. This was deposited in a bucket and then taken to fill a newly built raised bed. We were even joined by a family passing by who were on a day trip to Brighton and decided to spend their last half hour waiting for the train home digging with us instead of going to the pub! Good choice! The rest of the group were shovelling top soil and compost into wheelbarrows and this formed the top layer of soil on the same raised bed. There is a community composting scheme in the garden so if you would like to compost your veg peelings, paper and cardboard then get in touch with Brighton and Hove Food Partnership

We all worked so hard on this physical task that we decided to forgo a fitness session to get even more done. To be honest any fitness session I came up with would not have been as effective or functional as the work you were all doing. Shovelling, lifting, digging, carrying and sweeping are all fantastic ways to get moving and build great functional fitness.

The team of volunteers were delighted with what we achieved and I can’t wait to walk through the garden later in the year and see the vegetables growing in the raised bed and the wildflowers growing on the banks and feel proud that we were part of making it happen!

Next week we are back to Sloane Court and it’s our monthly social next week so look forward to seeing you all then.

Keep on Running!