It may not be quite December, but Christmas began for GoodGym Nottingham as we headed back to the Brendon Lawrence Sports Centre. We met Eugene on arrival who explained that he had an important task for us to do indoors rather than tidying the outdoor space as we had originally planned (given the freezing temperature outside, we were not too disappointed by this!).

The Renewal Trust are holding a series of family events leading up to Christmas where they will be giving away goody bags containing various items, including some free tea bags. Our job was to stick labels on these advertising the Renewal Trust and their QR code. We did about 1000 packs all together, all while listening to a soundtrack of Christmas and disco classics! We even finished with a cup of tea using some of the tea bags that had become detached.

We welcomed two new GoodGymers, Jessica and Jane – it was lovely to meet you and we hope to see you at another task soon!

Rachel and Rachel headed to the Brendon Lawrence Sports Centre where we met Eugene for our latest task. We were expecting to be doing some weeding outside, but some kind soul had beat us to it. Instead, Eugene had a perfect indoor task for us (which we were quite pleased about as it was a chilly evening!).

Our task was to help rearrange two of the centre’s store cupboards so that the most used equipment was more accessible. This included moving a retro ‘ice hockey Subbuteo’ machine from the back of one cupboard to another, swapping it with a large pile of soft play mats. After an hour of moving various tables, chairs, mats, goal posts and the Subbuteo machine, we definitely felt like we’d had an all over workout, making this a perfect example of what a GoodGym task is all about!

The Brendon Lawrence Sports Centre, part of the Renewal Trust, is a fantastic local space which includes a sports hall, a dance studio and a meeting space. It runs a range of sports and play sessions for local children and adults and was buzzing whilst we were there with a yoga class and children’s football going on. We plan to be back there in a few weeks’ time to help with their outdoor space.

Today was Nottingham's launch session and we were helping the Renewal Trust to weed and plant wildflower seeds at Robin Hood Chase.

We were met by Eugene who made us feel very welcome, providing all the tools we needed as well as even getting us some water bottles half way through to keep us refreshed. We were also helped by our local Nottingham Councillors who quickly got stuck in, pulling up weeds and planting sunflower seeds.

We also celebrated Ashley's 100th Good Deed, an incredible achievement. His experience certainly showed in his super speedy weeding skills!

Hopefully we can return to start on the other flower beds and see the seeds that were sown today turn into beautiful flowers!