It’s not often that you get to learn what your community feels about you, that is, aside generally from outpourings at your funeral! Lisa Merryweather-Millard, however, a Canadian national long-established in Frome, and a much-loved teacher at the local college got to find out exactly how everyone felt about her when she was under threat of deportation, this threat delivered following an administrative error that saw the late filing of her work visa papers.
With just six weeks of pregnancy left with her second child, the devastated Lisa was given the shocking news over the phone at her workplace. Let’s imagine for one minute what this could mean – the immediate enforced removal from her home, her family and life; the possibility that her toddler child would not be able to leave with her; the possibility that no airline would be willing to fly a heavily pregnant woman across the world and that everything she had worked so hard for over nearly 20 years would be lost to her. Unlike most people she did not collapse into a wretched heap, or descend into a spiral of anxiety and defeated acceptance of her faith. Instead she did what she knew best, she rallied, she reached out to the amazing community in the town that she had grown to call home..and Frome saved her….and for good reason.
Lisa was born in London, Canada (complete with its own river Thames running through it!). She grew up in the suburbs, where life was good but there was heavy reliance on cars. A bookworm from an early age, she majored in English literature and minored in philosophy. Plans to visit Europe with a group of friends following graduation were scuppered when most of them got good jobs locally. Never one to be daunted, Lisa at the tender age of 21 headed east. Her adventure saw her travel alone for the first time as she made her way to the UK, to Plymouth and to Spain and Portugal and up and down several times through Europe. She eventually settled for a time on the Scilly Isles, a world so opposite to her hometown, where there were no sprawling suburbs or cars for that matter. A chance encounter with an Australian girl led her to Mells, just on the fringe of Frome. Bath became home for a number of years, where she worked in hospitality in some of the best known pubs including The Pig and Fiddle – those were fun times she tells me with a twinkle in her eye, but you can’t party forever right?
The early 2000s was a period in British history where there was a shortage of English teachers. English teachers were offered visas to stay in the UK. Lisa went to a number of interviews, where she explained that she was not a qualified teacher but had found a scheme where the government would pay her wages while she worked and studied to gain the correct qualifications. Her teaching career started in Cheddar where she commuted from Bath to every day. She finally moved to Frome College – following much commuting and now happily in a relationship with Phil her husband, they moved lock, stock and barrel to Frome.
Lisa first came onto my radar when nearly a decade ago, she instigated a project that saw Frome College media students working with businesses in the community. I worked with a group of truly gifted students on a fashion show and photo shoot that took place in the then undeveloped Silk Mill in the centre of Frome. It was a fabulous project and a real testament to a teacher who saw the potential of bringing unlikely communities together, to create a result better than the sum of their parts, and which gave students and businesses alike the opportunity to get to know one another.
The next I knew I was writing a letter to the Home Secretary Theresa May to fight for this wonderfully dynamic and gifted teacher to stay in our community. Nearly 2,000 people wrote individual letters. David Heath MP, who knew Lisa from teaching his children, took up her battle personally in the House of Commons. Local media reported her news, students set up a Facebook page in her support and the community rallied to save this person who had made such a contribution in her time here. Frome fought and won.
In the years that have followed, Frome benefited from their win. Lisa went on to be assistant headteacher at Frome College and helped to steer the school through a period of chaos from what Ofsted had deemed a ‘poor school’ to a ‘good school’. Teaching is a vocation for Lisa who speaks with such enthusiasm about working amongst groups of students and emotionally tells me of the rewarding nature of this kind of work. She was happy to feel that she could make a real difference. However, after 13 years at the college, Lisa realised she had different ideas about education and a different vision for her life, so after many dedicated years, she decided to resign.
Today though in the true nature of someone who undaunted travelled half-way across the world to make a contribution to society and who fought and won the right to stay, she has once again come out fighting. Issue 2 of ‘The Little Things’ magazine made its way home in every school child’s school bag at the end of last term.
A truly unique magazine which has family life at its core, and integrity at its heart. I didn’t bin it, along with the usual pamphlets and leaflets that lay crumpled at the bottom of my daughter’s bag. Instead, I sat and read it over a cup of tea, and have kept it for the fab recipes from local resident Katy Harris, along with reading and re-reading some of the features in this high quality publication. Lisa, talks about her ambitious plans for the magazine which has already received great feedback from as far afield as New York and Australia. It seems this dynamic lady has quite big plans for her new venture, along with big plans for her graphic design studio, Rather Nice Design, that she runs with her husband.
She tells me that she feels a sense of guilt and loss over not working in her chosen vocation of teaching, but then tells me that she’s running ‘WORD UP’, a creative writing campaign partly funded by Frome Town Council, which will see authors going into schools to inspire the art in young people. It seems that her feelings of guilt are unfounded, and that if anything she should take great pride in her ability to keep on giving back to the community who fought for her to continue being a part of it.
