Yesterday session was held at the Brighthelm Centre, a well-known community venue in central Brighton that hosts a wide range of social, cultural, and support services and other community-focused volunteering activities.

The main objective was to help out the centre with practical maintenance tasks to improve the accessibility and appearance of the community spaces, currently disrupted by building works that are in progress since weeks. After a warmup tuned by Zumba moves (courtesy of Zumba with Mon), we engaged in a combined sweeping action of stairwells indoors and of leaves outdoors, accompanied by a festive weeds scraping workout of the garden pavements. The grace of Ewan, the building manager, revealed just how meaningful our contribution was to him and to all who benefit from this vital community centre in Brighton.

Yesterday mild night turned to be a bonus, bringing most joy to our GoodGym-ing and chit-chatting about the coming up Xmas GoodGym social events. We welcomed Pavel at his second GoodGym session on a personal mission to do as many good deeds as possible by 2025.

More to come? Plenty!

This Tuesday, seven of us headed to Brighton Youth Centre again for a task that promised ‘moving fun action’. In GoodGym style, that turned into a full-body workout featuring sofas, cushions, cabinets, giant boards, and several floors’ worth of stairs.

We started by hauling furniture and sofa pillows up those multiple floors, honing our pivoting and manoeuvring skills from the last time we paid a visit. Then came a deep dive into the mysterious workings of power drills as we freed shelves from their wooden casings. We then hoiked the remains into the lift for their journey up to the (busy!) skate park to be repurposed and, by the sounds of it, reassembled(?!).

Outside, in classic UK November fashion, the weather treated us to rain and hail as we battled big wooden boards over to the bins. Sometimes with brute force, sometimes with the saving grace of a rolling trolley.

In between all the heavy lifting, we managed to get lost between floors (more than once), locked out of several rooms (trapping Annette’s beanie hat in one) and learned the increasingly odd system of codes needed to activate different lifts - some of us needing to link them to different historical events to be able to memorise them.

And, during one of the ‘we’re locked out’ journeys down the stairwell to find some help, I spotted a text announcing that my niece had just been born! Definitely a GoodGym mission I won’t forget anytime soon, a ‘where were you when...’ moment for the books :-)

Great work GG-ers - Brighton Youth Centre is clearer and looking better than ever!