Five of us met at the Queen Victoria's statue and headed to the Brighton & Hove Food Partnership Community Kitchen, where we joined the rest of the GoodGymers. Jo, our task owner, told us about the family community cooking classes they’ve been running all summer to support Brighton & Hove's funded Holidays Activities and Food programmes to beneficiary children and young people who learned how to make simple, healthy and delicious homemade dishes.

Our job tonight was to clean up the kitchen and make it extra welcoming for the final class on the day after.

We were joined by Tabitha, who’s soon moving to Amsterdam, and Carla, who’s also leaving Brighton soon. It was great to have them with us, and they worked hard to make the kitchen shine. If this was our last time seeing Tabitha, we wish her all the best and thank her for everything she’s done with GoodGym ❤️. We look forward to seeing Carla again before she goes 😉.

After a good scrub, the kitchen was spotless and ready for the coming up grand finale of the family cookery class, happening the day after! We got to tick those tasks off the to-do list—a job well done! 🎂

Brighton GoodGym,Bravo!

Do you know that....

As GoodGym volunteer you can participate to cookery classes with a GoodGym discount code. Furthermore, we could attend a 6-week cookery course at the B&H Community Kitchen by accompanying people they support, as referred by TogetherCo. This is an exemplar GoodGym’s mission that could help isolated people to build up routine and feelings of confidence.

For more information, ask our GoodGym Area Lead, Stefania and email hello@togetherco.org.uk

This Tuesday, GoodGym Brighton has been Running Out Of Time, and we made a few pledges to act together as a community for climate and nature!

On this lovely warm evening, ten GoodGym-ers ran 2km to the beach where we picked up litter grabbers and Surfers Against Sewage's sacks to collect the litter. We spread out along the beach towards the iconic i360 and up on the path above the beach finding plastic bottles, cans and wrappers, but not too much litter this time, which was good to see. Some tourists gave us their rubbish and one asked an unusual question, ‘Can you fly a drone on the beach?’ It was explained we were not the council (!), and just volunteers so weren’t really sure.

After the task, we ran to the square near the i360 for some fitness exercises. Stefania divided us into four groups for two circuits of four different exercises: squats, tricep dips, step ups and press ups. Although it was tiring, it was also great exercise!

Delighted by the lovely warm and sunny evening, yesterday’s Brighton GoodGym group session helped the Waterloo Street Community Garden, a secret beauty and well used community space between The Old Market and the Waterloo Street Arch. The Old Market opened in 1828 as a covered marketplace for sales of meat, fish and vegetables, supplying the residential development of Brunswick, which was originally independent from Brighton and Hove village. Now it is an independent mixed-arts venue under the name "TOM – The Old Market".

Last year we helped the Friends of Waterloo Street Community Garden to win an outstanding award from the Royal Horticultural Society in the Britain In Bloom competition. And this year, 11 of us were here again to timely help our friends to maintain the royal title! So, we moved all the pots to clear the area and reach every hidden corner to then join a sweeping fest with brooms and dustpans!

Best of luck, dear friends!

We finally managed to return to help our friends from the The Bevy Pub – More Than a Pub! The Bevy is the first community run pub whose events and profits support the local community: from kids who need a square meal to seniors who want some company and everyone in between, The Bevy is there.

As well as being Brighton’s only community owned pub, is the Bevy Brighton’s first zero food waste pub? Every weekday lunchtime they serve up home cooked community lunches at affordable cost thanks to their link with Fareshare Sussex who redistribute surplus food, feeding bellies not bins. Any food waste is then put in their new hot composter, to produce gold standard compost that is then used in the edible pub garden. They’ve been adding 400 litres of mixed waste per week. For every 3 parts they put in, they get 1 part of top-quality compost - and the punters and fruit, veg and flower garden all love it!

Yesterday, GoodGym Brighton welcomed new member Euan and helped Dave, Shirley and Warren to enrich the soil with Bevy-Made compost, planted pumpkins, harvested rhubarb and cleared the Rubus Fruticosus, also called brambles, from invasive weeds – in a few words, we got the edible pub garden ready for the summer season, when we will come back to look out for the juicy berries to make the most of this place favourite.

The Bevy struggles to make money from food, but ironically it is their community approach to food that is a shining example of how this untypical pub on an ordinary estate working with a host of different organisations, is helping to achieve extraordinary things. Nowdays the Bevy’s work is more important than ever, with economic pressures on the rise. Let’s help our friends to realise their current plans and crowdfunding ambitions! Please Donate and Share