Continuing our spotlight on local people as part of the Westbury & Me photography project led by artist, Penney Ellis.
Commissioned by Wiltshire Council, the project teaches people how to take better photographs and with their improved skills, they photographed someone they consider to have made a contribution to community life.
The people they identify will also be asked to complete a set of phrases to reveal a bit about themselves. This will form the content of a set of posters featuring Westbury people. The ‘Westbury & Me’ photographs are then made into posters, which will go up in places such as the library, the community centres and town hall, schools and a selection of shops and pubs.
If you would like to nominate a Westbury resident, please contact Penney Ellis 07896 315778.
Jason Curtis, Debbie Cole and Ellie-J Webb have already been featured in the past three issues of White Horse News, and Lynette Weekley is featured below.
There will also be an opportunity to see an exhibition of images, taken by local people under the guidance of Penney, capturing unique and quirky features of Westbury at Westbury Street Fayre on Saturday 12th July.
Penney explains, “At the street fair I will give out trail maps for people to find the photos. People are invited to follow a picture trail matching photos to their locations. Participants who complete the trail will have an opportunity to win a place on a six-week digital photography course in September.”
To find out more please visit Westbury and me at www.photo-sensitive.co.uk
Lynette Weekley
Lynette is a retired teacher and lecturer. She is over 65 and was an only child of parents who lived into their eighties.
Lynette has lived in Westbury for 13 years and previously in Bristol and North Devon.
She spent four years at St Andrews University followed by one year at Oxford University.
She is a member of the Westbury Art Group where she paints in watercolour and oils. She also sings with the Westbury and District Choral Society and plays the organ for Sunday worship at All Saints Church.
Lynette is a volunteer director of Crosspoint Welcome Centre in Westbury where she manages the outlet for the Warminster foodbank.
The house I grew up in ... was on a corner, so we didn’t have a back garden like other people; in the garden you were always in plain sight.
When I was a child I wanted to be … a teacher!
You may not know this but I am very good at … knowing where things are such as books, letters, tins of baked beans.
You may not know this but I am very bad at … leaving what I’m doing to do what I should be doing next.
It might be fashionable but I don’t like … Facebook, Twitter and reality shows.
The thing that makes me laugh … Not slapstick but things people say; satire.
The living person I most admire is … (Sorry!) the Queen.
I admire her because … Day in day out, she has to be Queen with all its unavoidable demands on time and effort. And she does it very well.
When I have time to myself I … read, catch up on TV programmes I have recorded or tidy the house.
My proudest achievement … was getting up in time each day to commute to London from Bristol on an Intercity 125 for two years.
If I could change one thing about myself … it would be to be sure of finishing what I start.
It changed my life … Moving from North Devon and Exmoor scenery to Wiltshire and its ‘open to the sky’ landscape.
My most treasured possession … is the kitchen pumice stone still on my kitchen window sill as it was on my mother’s when I was three.
I wish I had never given up … playing my violin.
My happiest memory ... Skiing down run 3 at Kuehtai, Austria, high in the mountains on a beautiful day.
My favourite bit of Westbury … is the sunken Victoria Garden beside the churchyard.
Westbury would be the perfect place to live if … enough people would consent to have a bypass where they personally don’t want it.
If the iconic Westbury Horse galloped away, I would like to see it replaced by … a white cliff if possible.
Interview and photograph by Chris Johnson
