The people at the Waterloo Street Community Garden are always pleased to see us, and last night was no different. They put us straight to work cleaning up the space, sweeping away leaves, deadheading, and weeding.

We were armed with sweeping brushes, secateurs, and a dustpan and brush (Tom was doing a brilliant job with that last one!). Charlotte and Sarah even brought their own weeding tools along and put them to great use. We even encouraged a local to join our efforts for a bit, and we gained some great local restaurant recommendations from him!

As the light levels dropped, foot traffic to the nearby Old Market started to increase (Chris Difford from Squeeze was playing, apparently), so we packed up and headed home.

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!

We managed to save 30+ sandwiches, 3 baguettes, 30+ pastries, plus other treats to turn Good quality unsold food in a feast for the ChoirWithNoName Brighton, celebrating their 7th birthday with a flash mob gig in the Open Market, Brighton Station and Band Stand.

It was a great fun baking homemade muffins alltogether while rehearsing the songs that Amanda and Stefania also performed with the choir on the day, including:

*Times Like These - Foo Fighters:

It's times like these you learn to live again It's times like these you give and give again It's times like these you learn to love again It's times like these, time and time again*

Happy birthday ChoirWithNoName!

The choir is invititing us to their next open rehersal on Monday 8th October - Are you coming?

From the Austrian Alps to a GoodGym’s 'green community mission' in the lovely garden of roses in Vale Park, with a grand group: 15 GoodGymers – a great return to Good Gym-ing, yesterday!

Less great was the daily news: "One of the lions has passed", as Out of Africa movie’s co-star Meryl Streep said about Robert Redford, the "true Hollywood legend" actor, director, Sundance film festival founder and decades-long environmental activist, who passed away yesterday, aged 89.

This news might be relatively less touching for most of my fellow GoodGymers in Brighton, but your Area Activator, Stefania, has been hiding a secret love for Robert since its early teenager years, when she fell in love for the actor after watching “Out of Africa”, considered by my mum as my first adult cinema experience. It was love at first sight, on-screen! When I turned 40, I also received a massive bouquet of roses with a lovely message from Robert, via Interflora - it was actually a lovely gift from my friend Manuela 😊

Nevertheless, I like to dedicate our GoodGym green action of caring for Vale Park’s roses to my favourite actor, and secret love 😉. Here are some other tribute quotes: "He was a beautiful person in every way", “One of his kind”, "He championed progressive values like protecting the environment and access to the arts while creating opportunities for new generations of activists and filmmakers."

Robert was a hero for a lot of us. I will keep alive my long-lasting love and administration for such a trueful star believing that what counts is the story that we tell from our Good actions. Then, Let’s!

Welcome Paolo, Nathan, Susie to GoodGym Brighton, doing positive stuff for the environment ... a little bit like my Robert 😉

We caught some beautiful autumn sun for our September trail run around Stanmer Park. 7 goodgymmers completed the 13km loop to and from Stanmer via an ascent of Ditchling Beacon. We welcomed Mike for his first Goodgym session too (although definitely not his first sojourn around Stanmer!).

We all went for a freshly pressed apple juice afterwards at the Stanmer Village Apple Harvest and several people continued on to help out there too.

The route is here although I'm not sure how long it remains available on the website so there is a screenshot in the photos too.

11 Goodgymmers jogged and walked the short journey over to Round Hill to help keep the neighbourhood tidy. When we arrived we joined forces with Dom and the volunteers from the Round Hill Society. The Round Hill Society helps to preserve, improve and create pride in the the area. We also welcomed new Goodgymmer Andrea to her first task!

After going to pick-up tools from the local community store we split into 3 groups to tackle a few different areas. Armed with secateurs, shovels and brooms we got to work on cutting back bindweed, trimming overhanging hedges and clearing the edges of the pavement. With 3 big teams and a can-do attitude we made short work of the pesky bindweed and quickly filled-up 14 bin bags. The looming darkness at the end of the task reminded us children of summer that autumn was indeed coming!

Once we finished all our tasks and regrouped, in scenes reminiscent of Jesus feeding the 5000 Stefania fed us all from huge reserves of end-of-life croissants, bread and salad. Fully carbed-up we all jogged back home in the autumn darkness.