We built this

We're currently making a big deal of GoodGym being ten years old. Like all arbitrary milestones, it is giving many of us an opportunity to pause and reflect. To be honest, it is kind of incredible that someone should take the idea of running to go and help someone, actually go and do it themselves, and then find a way of people all across the country to do it as well. It is easy to under-estimate just how hard this is to do. The landscape is littered with ideas that never quite took hold, or started to gain some traction only to fall apart along the way. The truth is these stories more often than not end in failure than they do in success (and who knows, our story may yet end it failure in too!)

I've been part of the GoodGym journey for about 6.5 years of the 10 we're celebrating. I loved it from the first moment I heard about it, but I'll make a confession - I thought it would crash and burn. Seriously! When I first heard it was trying to scale across the country I expected that Icarus like it would reach too far, too soon and this wonderful thing that I was part of would collapse under its own weight and join the long list of great hopes for positive social change. I don't think that concern will ever really leave me(!) but I've been pondering why I was so wrong.

Humble ambition

Our growth has been rapid for our sort of an initiative, and the expansion has to be fair been relatively aggressive. If people have wanted a GoodGym somewhere, we have done our darndest to make it happen as quickly as we can, learning as we do it rather than tinkering to perfection before sharing it with everyone. Boy has it been tough, and we carry a fair few scars from the journey as we try and make getting fit and doing good mainstream. What I think has helped us keep it together has been our discipline in knowing what we're good at, and what we're not good at. A quote that has forever stuck in my mind is from John Lennon talking about The Beatles "We were just a band that made it very big". I'd like to think that for all the grand talk out there, we've tried to hold on to the truth that we're little more than a cute way to connect people who struggle to connect through other means. We're open to everyone but we know we're not right for everyone. We work with partners who are far bigger than us and have far more impact than we might ever have, but we create the conditions for unique moments that would not have happened otherwise. We have resisted calls for us to try and be something we're not. We know we're one cog in a vast societal machine, but that doesn't mean we can't strive to be the best version of ourselves we can possibly be.

I'd go so far as to say that many of our runners feel the same on a personal level as well.

We're not a disruptor

For a recognised social innovation, we're a pretty safe initiative. Certainly when you look at the wider asset based community development landscape, we're quite structured, quite centralised, very conscious of rules and regulations. Interestingly we probably get on with and have better working relationships with established institutions and community sector groups than we do with whoever the latest cohort of bright young things are out there trying to shake things up. Yeah we can take a pop at gyms now and again, but we respect leisure providers who embed social connection in their approach, and if a GoodGym member built up the confidence to take their fitness more seriously and join a local gym or leisure facility, that's a huge win and we'd be hugely proud of them. Similarly while we know traditional volunteering roles can feel exclusive and a bit out of date to a lot of people who come along, it's incredibly exciting when one of our members discovers a local project that sparks their passions and they go on to more structured volunteering and support. We're just a different way of getting in to both social and physical activity. I find it quite interesting that we're often talking about how we design for our partners and pragmatically how things are at the moment, rather than designing for how things should be (we try and do a bit of both where we can).

We built this

Co-production. Eurgh it is a term I have constantly struggled with and I'm still not entirely sure what counts and what doesn't! However, when I think of the development of GoodGym, I think of all the people who have contributed and shaped it over the years. Ivo, is undoubtedly our architect. My friend inspires me constantly (he frustrates me a little too!) and his ability to see things that others cannot, to help people believe in the impossible, is central to why GoodGym exists. I can only imagine the feeling of designing something in your mind's eye and then seeing it come to life in front of you. As amazing as Ivo is though, he could not do this alone. Everyone who has been involved in it, be it working in the central office, leading a GoodGym area, funding it, referring into it, supporting it, criticising it, signing up, participating in it, benefiting from it, all of them have had a hand in building what it is today. I like to think that every good deed we have done is another brick in the building process.

When it comes to social action, the interesting thing about bricks is you can either pick them up and throw them, or you can collect them together and use them. They can have an immediate loud impact on their own, but collectively they can slowly build something amazing.

This is what I couldn't see way back when and what I'm starting to see now. I thought the larger we grew, the weaker and more unsteady our foundations would be. It turns out that all we were ever doing was building and strengthening our foundations, and in turn letting all the amazing people around us feel stronger and more able to make things a little bit better for everyone else.

I built this. You built this. We built this. Rather excitingly, I have a feeling we're only just getting started.