Jennie Dennett

TIU: Hi Jennie! I know you are not native to Ulverston so please can you fill us in on your background and what brought you to town?

J: I am from Castle Cary in Somerset and so is my husband, Chris – well he’s from Yeovil, so not far away. I basically ended up in Ulverston for love. Chris moved up here to get a job at CGP in Broughton and I was trying to get him to move to London. I came up to visit him – pulled into Ulverston station , met him in Buffers, got changed in the toilets and had a great night there. Sat around in the Rose & Crown the next day in front of a roaring fire, walked on the beach and I just thought why on earth would I make him come to London? I am coming here!

TIU: It’s good to hear that it was love. When you get older you realise that a healthy long term relationship can multiply the happiness in every other area of your life but when you are younger you never quite see the correlation just a need to choose between a relationship and career or whatever else rather than cultivate both. Total emphasis on “healthy” of course a bad relationship can have the opposite effect. So that heartens me!

J: At the time I was living in a house share. It was sort of near an A road and the way the wind currents worked along there it just had this vortex of rubbish that was always circulating around our front door and you would have to fight your way through fag and crisp packets and I just felt that I didn’t want to be there I wanted to be in the place with the nightclub at the train station!

TIU: There was a point when I was being asked if I would be in Buffers every weekend but I wasn’t much of a clubber. RIP to those days though!

J: Those were really fun days. There was a really good crew at CGP – Chris was living in a house share with some of his colleagues and it was a really nice group of friends . We spent a lot of time in Buffers and the other Ulverston pubs getting rounder and redder faced as time went on!

TIU: The fire in the Rose & Crown was an institution for us when we were at Barrow Sixth Form. All those hours spent waiting for buses in Sid’s Room…

J: Sid was before my time but I am very grateful for Sid’s Room I’ve had some lovely afternoons in front of that fire!

TIU: What is your favourite local area?

J: Roanhead. Just standing on those sands so soft between your toes and the huge horizons out across the Duddon Estuary. Just perfection, the most perfect place. When the kids were little we had many happy times just bombing up and down those dunes rolling around it’s just heavenly down there.

TIU: Sid’s Room must have been late 90s sort of time?

J: 1999. We moved up to Rachael’s Court and had a flat there before getting married and moved into our first house in The Gill. Things were a lot cheaper back then we bought it for fifty thousand. At that time I got a job at The Westmorland Gazette so we had dual income and no kiddies. Even though my salary was like eleven thousand we had money to go on lovely holidays – we went diving in Thailand! We didn’t have to spend all our money on the mortgage because it was quite cheap. I feel exceedingly grateful for those times.

TIU: Yes before the internet was in every home. Even though it has enhanced my life and paid my way ever since I still spend most of my downtime getting away from screens. I think I first used it in 1997 and was still having to go into the university library to reply to my emails in 1999. Before that screens had been for videos or learning how to program Spectrum / BBC computers but it was still taken with a heavy dose of the outdoors!

J: I think it is so addictive you can get very lost in there. You suddenly wonder what you have done that day and its basically having scrolled through lots of things that haven’t enriched your life that much! When the kids were little I spent a lot of time on Facebook and I am grateful because it helped me get a group of mum friends – building on those chats at the school gate. Finding people I had lots in common with and that I liked. It deepened those friendships and make the network stronger.

TIU: The internet is a neutral tool the problem is in how humans choose to use it and that’s a positive example, certainly.

J: Exactly it meant that when my kids did something fun I could share it or when I was feeling lonely I could have adult conversations and also be with the kids. It was important to share those moments, very reassuring.

TIU: It’s hard work being a mum!

J: Yes but its also very joyous and I had a lovely time. Rita was my best mum friend through those years and we would have all those times going to the park having a good old gossip and occasionally a bottle of Prosecco!

TIU: So to track back to your work history, you started out at The Westmorland Gazette?

J: Yes well I did a Geography degree and started out in town planning which was a terrible mistake – a very legal career and you have to be excited about point scoring and knowing which planning policy guidance notes beats the other and I just really hated it. One of my dad’s cousins worked in town planning and cleaned the Manchester Ship Canal that was her whole life career in the council was regulating businesses and getting people to stop polluting the canal. I thought it was making a really positive impact in the world but you do have to have patience for the rules and enjoy tweaking bureaucracy to get the outcomes you want and I just did not have the patience for that at all. I went to London and was working for Journeyman Pictures a television production agency – they were producing their own work and also selling other news footage. I felt that I could be like Kate Adie it looked exciting and amazing. One of my jobs there was selling footage to other news channels and we were producing a clip reel for the Rory Peck Awards – in honour of all the freelance cameramen who had died that year. It was a risky career and I realised the people who excelled at that really extreme reportage are people who were – well a lot of them have military backgrounds so they had access to things and knew how to handle themselves in hostile situations and I knew that wasn’t me! I also think they had slightly less empathy. It takes something to just keep filming whilst something awful is happening instead of helping. I am not that person.

TIU: This reminds me of that haunting photo taken by Frank Fournier of the girl trapped by the landslide. It has always made me uneasy that it exists although I see the need for it to exist because she existed.

J: There is absolutely a moral rule to war reportage you need to share the shit for people to see how awful it is to stop the war. It is a moral role to be the person pointing the camera but I haven’t got it in me. I didn’t stick with it. It was horrendously stressful and I was always financially on the edge. Sometimes I would be paid late and I would have to cash my cheques at Cash Converters to pay the rent. I just couldn’t afford to live in London. When I came to Ulverston I found a better way to live. So I settled up here and at that point I did not have journalism qualifications. I started at the Gazette doing data input in the early days of the internet where they were trying to take all of their advertising classifieds and put them online. So Newsquest set up Fish4Homes, Fish4Jobs and it was my job to take all the classifieds and put the info online. It was really boring but thankfully the lovely news editor at the time decided I was over qualified for that and he sent me off to do the newspaper qualifications at Darlington. So I got properly trained at the Gazette as a local journalist which is great because that doesn’t happen now if you wanted that you would have to pay for the course. I was hardly earning anything it was a really low salary but they paid for my training. I had a lovely time at Darlington college and met some great people.

TIU: For any budding journalist reading this the the advice is always lot of experience?

J: Exactly but of course you don’t need to ask permission nowadays you can just do it. Make content and put it on your own channels and if its good you can get paid for it. Its frustrating isn’t it that you have to do quite a lot of work for free to get to that point but it does happen.

TIU: Happened for me for the first time in the late 2000s. I was paying all of my bills with a part time hobby blog all about home decor and interior design. For some reason I was obsessed with painting everything white which I thankfully moved on from but sadly your readers will always expect the content they have come to expect so I gave it up. If I started something up again on that level I would really have to be careful about the chosen niche. Serena Williams was even following us on Twitter!

J: You can see I am not a white walls person I like my comforting clutter. All my knick knacks!

TIU: And you have a room in your house devoted to all those knick knacks?

J: Yes we call it the room of requirement – shoved full of stuff. It is where all the Candlelit Walk stuff is and all the stuff we made for Another Fine Fest. Just boxes and boxes of things that will come in handy!

TIU: Tell me more about Candlelit Walk and the other events you are involved with…

J: I’ve always been involved in community arts. My mum was a textile artist and it was always going on – she would be doing workshops like mask making, papier mache, stitch, marbling – she was always running workshops and I would often help out. So it has always been part of my life. It is very satisfying being creative in company with other like minded people – it absolutely brings the happy. So we do more and more of that! You also don’t have to ask for permission. If you want to be a professional artist here there are gatekeepers to that whereas if you are involved in voluntary arts you make the things that you enjoy making. It might have an audience, it might not but it’s the process that is the important thing and the connection you make with other people while you are doing it. Ulverston is just awash with opportunities to do that and that is the other reason why I had to come here and not drag Chris to London. We went to the Lantern Festival and I made my first lantern – an Ammonite – I was really proud of it but I made it too small and it burnt on Ford Park.

TIU: Everyone has a burnt lantern story, (as my family well know!)

J: Just seeing all those people really chuffed with what they had made and there is the beautiful spectacle of all these lanterns gathered together, all these people having a nice time together. I had a little cry it was the most beautiful thing! So as soon I was living here I got involved in absolutely everything.

TIU: I’ve been back two years now and I’ve only just managed to get this website off the ground!

J: It’s partly because Chris is into it too so he’s entirely supportive and we share looking after the kids. Lots of the things we do they do with us as well such as lanterns, candles etc. Its something we can all do together.

TIU: So many chances in Ulverston for younger children especially to have a go at something creative.

J: Honestly it makes me so happy that my kids can whip up a lantern – they are children of Ulverston! Doing the workshops I’ve noticed that there’s a cycle where they will come when they are very little but until they are about eight managing the clipper and the tapings are really hard for them. Making a great lantern with kids under eight is a challenge, but past that age as soon as they get the hang of it with the hand strength and the dexterity they’re away. They get inspired by the lanterns they see in the room and off they go to make their own thing. I’ve noticed the golden period is between about age eight to twelve before the too cool for school age kicks in. But lots of people come back to it – especially when they have their own kids. They remember what it was like to make them and want to come back to show their children. Suddenly you have a festival that has been going for forty years and generations of lantern makers all at the same table. Then I start crying because it’s all so beautiful!

TIU: Tell us about the rest of your projects…

J: At the moment I am the secretary of Ulverston Lantern Festival and at Ulverston Candlelit Walk I do most of that so I don’t think my Candleit comrades will be too distressed if I call myself Chair. I also make flags for Flag Fest. With Rachel Weaver at 2X2 she is my sister in craft so most years since Another Fine Fest started we have done a community craft flash mob thing like a show, a spectacle an event together. We both just love making and its joyous to get people together to do silly crafts! The bigger the better! I suppose those things are the ones that make me the most proud. It gives me a sense of agency there is all these people who have had a good time and you helped to make that happen.

TIU: Right and you also enjoyed yourself doing it. I always think if you can find something creative that you love that gives to others then you made it! Especially if it’s your full time job.

J: I go to a lot of boring committee meetings and live in a pile of craft crap but…

TIU: It’s a lifestyle!

J: Yes! You can get really depressed can’t you with the state of the world and you can’t really do anything about it but you can make your bit of the world happier to be in.

TIU: It’s the only part you can have any effect on. There will always be conflicts and desires and conflicting desires outside of ourselves that are so much bigger than us. Choosing to be happy in any given moment is like this golden life hack that no one really teaches us.

J: It gives me a great sense of satisfaction when I can be at a festival and know that it happened because I and other volunteers made it happen and take great satisfaction in knowing that that day people were happier because of something we did and that is immensely invigorating!

TIU: I am going to pick out the Candlelit Walk as there is a certain parental pressure to do something on that night that might not necessarily be trick or treating. In the city there were open nights at the Museums on Halloween so I was pleasantly surprised to find an event like that happening here. My son and my mum like to go to it.

J: A Halloween buzz! It was started by Geoff Dellow who had a little pottery workshop up on Union Lane. He was given a load of terracotta clay by the Dalton Pottery when it closed down and he wanted to start a community project using that clay – and that is where the pottery holders that sit on the railings come from. He was also given scrap wax from Wax Lyrical and because he was originally a chemist at Glaxo he often wondered what he could do with all the materials and so he ended up heating everything. Hence the combination of fire, clay and melting wax. When he first did it it was an awful lot of work for such a short amount of time and also it was October and we were wondering maybe this is a bit mad trying to light all these candles outside in October but it was beautiful. Like you say you might want to celebrate or mark Halloween but not by trick or treating. There is a general feeling of sliding towards Winter and the event sort of shakes a stick at that and the dark to say it’s okay that it’s coming, we still have fire! That moment when we have all the candles lit I stand on the top path and look down at the combination of candlelight and autumn colours at dusk it’s such an uplifting spectacle. Every year, even when it’s peed down and been a disaster as long as that moment happens it’s all been worth it! It’s obviously not just for kids either its for everyone as well as it being about creative people coming together to make things and enjoy making them. I am a terrible procrastinator who needs deadlines to finish things. I think a lot of creatives are like that and so it gives us a reason, a deadline. It is all volunteers none of it is paid work but so many people are happy and enthusiastic to make something. They can then go on the walk themselves and watch people enjoying their work, others really loving what they made and they had to finish because they knew people were coming to see it!

TIU: TIU probably languishes a little because of no deadlines – I have the ten people a year goal in my head but the major factor considering everything else in my life was to just let it grow organically at its own pace.

J: It’s a common creative dilemma procrastination I think. I am very faddy I can get really seized by needing to make something right there and then. But if there are challenges along the way it doesn’t quite turn out as well as it could have.

TIU: Remind me to show you my latest virtual build – I often get the urge to make a mansion when I should really be making dinner.

J: When you are making something and its actually going well and you get totally lost on that its such a beautiful feeling. It’s fleeting though isn’t it?

TIU: Oh yes if I don’t finish a build within a few days it is a real slog to come back to it later. That’s when it starts to feel like work. But let’s get back to your CV as I know there have been more moments you can tell us about…

J: The thing I am most proud of is the pie fight – the world record breaking pie fight. That was me, Rachel and Ceri. It was a thing for Another Fine Fest to uphold the spirit of Stan Laurel, the silliness. It was so hard to organise the world record rules are really difficult to follow. I wrote a whole article about it for Neil Fleming – testing different sorts of foam – the least stinging one to get in your eyes. I bought like ten different brands and poked them in my eyes to test them. Then it turned out its not a thing that people stock much of these days it was hard to get the volume of foam we needed and then it didn’t arrive until the very morning of the event. There was just so many mega stressful things about it but the moment the whistle blew and the pies started flying there was a joyful squeal – just the most joyous noise I’ve ever heard in my life. Whenever there is a dark day I remember that noise of people being given permission to be silly. Such a happy day, so good but very stressful! The next year we did the rainbow record breakers thing for Fine Fest as well it rained and it was like one of those colour fling things. Up until the very last minute we were wondering if we were even going to be able to do this thing. Everyone’s party hats dribbled a bit in the rain. Still a joyous occassion but trying to do three world records…we definitely bit off more than we could chew. After that we did the banana dance – I made a dress pattern, peeled a banana, traced it and then used a projector to make it massive and then designed our scaled up cardboard bananas – just being around yellow paint is uplifting! I was pleased with Big Lantern 2024 where I did the Where The Wild Things Are Monster with Chris. The cardboard roller coaster was also a good one. All of the Fine Fest things have been really fun but I am glad it’s off this year because Dave Crossley who organises it, he breaks himself every year doing it, he needs a rest.

TIU : Ah yes he’s an obvious interviewee for us eventually…

J: Yes, do it! The Spot is the new thing for us right now – we’ve bought the Old Mart – the former kitchen showroom on Victoria Road and the grand plan is to turn it into a community hub. It will have a middle space which is a hall for hire, workshop space again, big lanterns could be made in there, dance classes or aerial ones maybe there’s a bit of height to that space. There is a home for Ulverston Food Project and there’s also a meeting room and a bit of office space. We hope that Citizens Advice will be one of the tenants. There is a third bay which will be for Digital Woodoo – self build modular wooden structures. Some of the machinery they have was funded by a grant from the west coast – a Sellafield related thing I think – but the community can use it as well so it feels like it will grow into a really useful maker space. That’s the big plan but its intimidating – big piles of money. We did it with the Community Ownership Bid in mind but then that stopped at the election. We were all poised to get those funds which was money to both buy and renovate the building so we then had to get enough donations in which was huge. We got enough to get the building but now the huge task begins because once you get a building you also get bills!

TIU: I always had that great feeling of a fresh new space when we ran the vintage corp – a new warehouse or retail space was so exciting.

J: We have a good group of people – Ceri Hutton she is an amazing warrior woman, Simon Wand a structural engineer, Zoe Mander who is part of the Ulverston Resillience group a real sort of community mother hen. So good people just a big task and I occasionally want to run away from it! My instincts are to keep it cheap and do it yourself but its a big building and if we are going to do it properly and make it something that people are as excited about as Lanternhouse then we need those big grants. We just need to keep slogging away to get those applications in to unlock the funds to make it all possible.

TIU: Tell me about Artfly also…

J: Me and Chris have a company together called Artfly where we make interactive, playful things. Most recently we did a watercolour exhibit at the Dock Museum – listening posts, photo portals, allowing people to actually get into the pictures. We also have here the Couch Potato High Five Machine which we made for Park Run. We got all of the park runners to record messages of support – there were a lot of potato related ones and when you high five it it plays back support.

TIU: And of course, you work for the BBC?

J: Yes two days a week for Radio Cumbria. I still really enjoy it but it has changed massively – it was a much bigger organisation when I joined with the studio in Barrow and now I work from home. With local journalism people want to hear good things about where they live so you do get a more balanced diet of news – the good and the bad. Lots of things I do for radio involve lovely people who have done something good – saw a problem, done a fundraiser to make it better. There are a lot of good stories to tell. So much of it in my career has been council cuts and that is depressing so I think that’s why I enjoy community arts so much I can still have a jolly time at a festival even if I have spent a week reporting bad news! I went part time when the kids were small and never went back to full time. I am much happier personally like this. I know a lot of people so in terms of telling stories for news I am quite good at finding case studies. We did a really good Artfly project – the People’s Museum of Barrow and that week I spoke to about a thousand people and the stories that fell out of that! Proper local reportage. People with stories to share that they hadn’t shared anywhere else and I was their connection – that’s when it feels really good.

The Artfly website, Ulverston Candlelit Walk

Author: H.J.

Founder & Editor of This is Ulverston.