AN ARTISTIC woman is snap happy after her work was picked to be displayed on a huge billboard in Preston city centre.

Olive Hopkins' work was chosen after a group of 13 people from the Brookfield estate, on the outskirts of Preston, worked with local artists on a photography course.

The grand unveiling of the huge billboard, designed to show off the group's work -- on the side of the County Arms Pub, in Deepdale Road -- will take place on June 18. The scheme was organised by Preston arts group Prescap, who turned to local artists Chris Davies and Tom Cox for help.

And Olive wasn't the only winner -- all the snappers will have their work published in a series of postcards. Chris, who runs an arts project on the estate, said: "It was an opportunity for us to take lots of pictures, and improve our skills. We asked people to go and take pictures of their environment, or wherever they live."

Organisers of the project, called Images of Brookfield, took enough images for a set of postcards, an exhibition at Brookfield Space Place -- the estate's community centre -- and a book.

Chris said: "The billboard is something I haven't been involved in before. We looked at all the different images we had taken and had a vote to see which image we wanted to use, and what words to go with it -- it's an image of a landscape from the estate."

Local resident -- and now published photographer -- Marie Derbyshire, joined in with the scheme. Her picture of St Maria Goretti Church, Gamull Lane, was turned into a postcard. She said: "I had never taken photographs before, and I thought it was great.

"Normally you don't bother taking pictures of gardens and little things. You normally just take weddings or a party."

Karen Hickling, arts project manager for Prescap, said: "The thinking behind the scheme was that we wanted to work with people who hadn't done a project with us before. So we targeted hard-to-reach estates on the outskirts of the city.

"Everyone is very pleased and proud of their work."

Larches and Savick estate, then the Fishwick and Callon areas are set to join the Brookfielders with their own schemes later this year.