Go easel on me

The Council Community Engagement Manager for Ealing Central & Acton reached out to us, offering us space to showcase GoodGym at their Your Voice, Your Town events at Ealing Broadway.

Sevan and Kash took up the challenge to engage with residents seeking opportunities to get involved in improving their local area. The quest to share knowledge about GoodGym's work in Ealing in a fun way began a couple of weeks ago with a few brainstorming sessions. Sevan had some cool ideas. All that was needed to set up a killer marketing stall was:

• a couple of cardboard boxes
• a kids' dart board set
• an easel
• a flipchart and marker pens
• GoodGym photo printouts
• the GoodGym flag
• leaflets
• bananas, nut snack packs, apples and Haribo
• six empty 4-pint milk bottles

After some confusion about the event location and the sudden lack of internet in Ealing Broadway, Sevan and Kash finally met at the Christ the Saviour school and scrambled to do a 20-minute setup at their tables. Sellotape has proven to be superior to an old roll of Scotch tape, and the boxes were not so obvious to fold. Kash gave up on the cartons and went on a mission to fill the milk bottles with water to create a simulation of GoodGym-style weights: heavyweight shopping bags.

The setup finished just about 7:30 pm when four guests suddenly appeared at the GoodGym stall. Sevan and Kash engaged them in their game of darts with prizes, questions and a forfeit. Kash particularly enjoyed demoing her penalty exercise: shopping bag bicep curls! The game turned out to be rather difficult as no one hit the bullseye throughout the evening.

Sevan in the meantime engaged in conversations about the visitors' idea of a gym. The game and thought-provoking questions were the main drivers of grabbing the public's attention as the massive screen offered to GoodGym, despite the best effort from the Council team, couldn't connect with the laptop with the photo reel.

The people visiting the event were very enthusiastic about the idea of GoodGym and keen on learning more. Hopefully, even though they didn't win the game, maybe we won their hearts, and we'll see them at a GoodGym session!

If you are an experienced GoodGymer, join us for another event like this in Hanwell!