Orinoco is a new project for us, but in fact has been going for over 20 years. They aim to inspire art, creativity and play through reuse of items that would otherwise be destined for landfill. Previously based in Peat Moors, they now have a shiny new home in Temple Cowley shopping centre and a lot of moving-in jobs to be done.

This was our 2nd Wednesday evening session at Orinoco. The book event we helped them prepare for last week was a roaring success at the weekend, with over £900 raised in donations. Now it was time to the flip the store from book shop to multi-purpose space.

Springing into action we had teams:
* Unloading the Orinoco van to bring in more stock.
* Clipping shelving together to make taller units and reconfiguring their layout.
* Reorganising the storage area at the back of the shop floor - breaking down cardboard boxes, taking loads of donations upstairs to the extensive store rooms above the shop.
* Stocking the shelves with books to make a library corner.
* Laying out the games in another section of shelving.
* Attempting construction of further shelving; a failed attempt due to missing elements of the units - no GoodGymers at fault ;-)

By the time our hour was up the shop was looking much closer to being ready for the big relaunch on 19th February.

Great work team!

With 8 GoodGymers out of 15 running together to the task tonight we tipped over the 50% runners mark - more Gym than Good this week ;-)

Orinoco is a new project for us, but in fact has been going for over 20 years. Their mission is to save items that would otherwise be destined for landfill and create something great out of them. They aim to inspire art, creativity and play through reuse. Previously based in Peat Moors, they now have a shiny new home in Temple Cowley shopping centre and a lot of moving-in jobs to be done. The first event in the new space will be a book day this Saturday - all info here - so the GoodGym flashmob was called in to put together shelving and arrange the books in a browsable way.

Luckily books are our bag, and several GoodGymers eyes lit up when they saw the boxes and boxes of books. Resident bookshop expert Katie got a team working away on book display while half a dozen other GoodGymers did battle with the shelving units. They definitely came out on top in the tussle, as many shelves were slotted together and pushed into place to be filled with donated books. Meanwhile Sarah and Anwen hauled sacks of red curtains with some elusive connection to David Beckham (no, not sure what that was) upstairs to the store rooms. Having previously been a clothes shop the stock rooms upstairs had some hanging rails, so we hung up as many of the curtains as we could to air. The room ended up resembling washing day in the Republic of Gilead but hopefully it will save the fabric from a mouldy future!

After an hour of GoodGym treatment the store was looking very close to being ready for a book event at the weekend. We were each invited to take a book home if something had caught our eye, and many did. Katie couldn't resist a book on Popes despite, or maybe because, she has a doctorate on the topic, Alice nabbed a colouring book for a self-isolating housemate and then had an interesting time working out how to cycle home with it, and Bethan ran back to base through the streets of Cowley clutching Baba the Elephant.

We'll be back again next week to get a load of the other stock loaded in and organised ahead of the grand reopening on 19th February.