On a gusty evening with glorious clouds, GoodGym Brighton saw a large turnout to celebrate eight incredible years of community missions, group runs and races. To mark the occasion, the group was split into two teams, one meeting at the Queen Victoria statue in Brighton and one meeting at the Peace Statue in Hove, the usual starting points for weekly GoodGym group runs, for a scavenger hunt, tracking down locations (including the odd GoodGym task venue) and numerical answers from a set of tricksy clues devised by GoodGym's ownLiam (for the Brighton hunt route) and Ben (for the Hove one).

Showing their mental acuity is as sharp as their Strava stats, the GoodGym teams bounded through all the required cryptic hoops to successfully deduce the answers, and the teams came together near the twin local icons of the Brighton i360 and the Upside Down House. The sum of all the clues for both teams unlocked a padlock to a golden litter picker, the evening's team captains Philippa and Rosie high-fiving with the collaborative spirit that typifies GoodGym Brighton.

The event was rounded off with a swift beach litter clearance and a lavish picnic sheltered near the shore, featuring a wide variety of drinks, fruit, crisps, falafel, salads, home-made cake and even GoodGym biscuits. All against the backdrop sound of the GoodGym banner flapping in the wind. Or was it applauding?

Sample scavenger hunt clues

Pinocchio's, Brighton (answer = 22)

Meander on down to Brighton's very own West End and catch a show if you have time. Performers might take the odd artistic liberty, but at what number do you find one who has bit more trouble fibbing?

Palmeira Square Floral Clock, Hove (answer = 9)

By no means a limp area! In the middle of traffic time works differently. When the time is next on the hour what would the time o'clock be then?

It's always happy times o' clock at GoodGym! Further afield, Carla and Stefania were getting involved in another hunt, of alpacas 🦙😊.

Thanks Juliet for pulling together this amazing group session and all for the great team work.

Happy birthday GoodGym Brighton! 🌈🎉🎂

Change (the garden) Grow (some vegetables) Life (enjoy it)

That’s what eight GoodGymers did this week, at Change Grow Life in Richmond House. We removed bind weeds and brambles to shape the ground of what will become a green oasis for gardening activities and growing vegetables.

Change Grow Live (CGL) offers support services to help people make positive changes in their lives, including help with substance misuse, mental health, and social challenges. They also have a gardening project where they are creating a new garden space, potentially aimed at providing therapeutic or social support through gardening as a tool to help people make positive changes in their lives. This could involve creating new garden spaces, growing vegetables, offering gardening activities as part of their support programs, or collaborating with other organizations to promote gardening for wellbeing.

With this social mission GoodGym Brighton also helped CGL to get ready for the memorial service that they hold annually on National Remembrance Day, which is the last Friday in July, to honour those who have lost their lives to drug and alcohol addiction. In 2025, this falls on July 25th. The garden might not be fully ready by then, but it shows some flourishing plants that were hidden by the brambles until now.

This was a very satisfying social mission!

On an evening of glorious (and, some might say, blinding) sunshine, this week's mission was at Wilding Waterhall, a former golf clubhouse turned in a multi-purpose community oasis perched on chalk grassland with knockout views of the South Downs, aka miles away from Brighton city centre up a not insignificant hill on the other side of the A27. Undeterred, the GoodGym team racked up the mileage by wheel or shoe to impress their Strava followers before tackling a menu of painting, window cleaning and weeding tasks with the usual combo of fired-up energy and miscellaneous chit-chat.

Rob, Events & Venues Officer from Brighton & Hove Food Partnership (BHFP), welcomed the group, served up glasses of orange squash (prompting a Proustian moment for some) and was duly impressed by the transformed walls, windows and paths at the end of the session. BFHP, who manage the venue, also run the Brighton & Hove Community Kitchen, another GoodGym regular destination due for another visit later in May.

As a poster fixed to a wall in the venue attested, Wilding Waterhall is part of the National Trust-led Changing Chalk partnership, which through rewilding aims to "restore lost landscapes and habitats, bring history and local cultures to life and provide new experiences in the outdoors".

This mission coincided with Mental Health Awareness Week, a cause very much allied to the ethos of GoodGym and the dual wellbeing boost that comes from volunteering and physical exercise, and to the work at Wilding Waterhall, promoting the restorative power of a spectacular natural environment 🐎🦗🌳

What a great GoodGym group session demonstrating once again the power of a community that cares!

WHAT's ON NEXT at GoodGym Brighton?
Plenty to amuse you to join us. EVERYBODY is welcome!

After some wondering and running along the colourful streets in Hanover, Brighton GoodGymers landed to the Phoenix Community Centre to join Simon and other residents from the Phoenix Estate Community Association and Hanover Action.

Hidden, mainly by the weeds 😊, in the heart of this small neighbourhood within the Hanover and Elm Grove area, we found a small allotment that Simon looks after with passion and where he grows vegetable for the Phoenix Food Shop. This is a Social Supermarket run by the community for the community to provide an equal provision of good quality and nutritional food at an affordable cost.

And so, equipped for full action and spit in two groups, one weeding and the other one painting over graffiti, GoodGym contributed to several grassroots initiatives aimed to make the Phoenix estate a better place for residents to live and thrive.
We welcomed new member Elle and returning Jenny!

Let's tell our friends WHAT's ON at GoodGym Brighton.

It is a wonderful life in a wonderful land!

On Earth day, GoodGym Brighton had a creative group session planned on our calendar: helping the Primary School S. Luke in the big build for the Brighton Festival Children Parade.

Groups of local schools have been exploring the theme 'New Dawn' as a way to think about our future. What do we want to change, what do we want to cherish, and what do we want to chuck.

Do Listen Our Voice: We Want to “chuck out stereotypes”!

Our Michelle invited us to push our creativity and see the world differently - inspired by Drew Daywalt’s children book: “The Days the Crayons Quit”.

We did a great job mashing paper sheets with glue on what will represent a box of crayons. They are Duncan’s crayons who quit their given roles to stand up for a better world with a wider diversity of colours.

Before running back, we could not resist to play our way and we turned into kids mode to do some fitness exercises. It was such a fun session and we enjoyed a lot ourselves while climbing like spidermen, hanging like monkeys, and jumping like kangaroos in the school’s playground.

Welcome back Amro to play with us all. Well done all, you all got a “well done sticker“!

WHAT's ON NEXT at GoodGym Brighton?
Plenty to amuse you to join us soon.

EVERYBODY is welcome!