A QUIRKY Fremantle business that’s reconnecting locals with their creative side is hoping to push them a little further to help carpet the Australian War Memorial with poppies.

Shevy Hanson brought across a franchise of popular Melbourne company Work-Shop and scored one of the cottages beside the Roundhouse where she’s been operating since July.

The company is like a private enterprise community centre, running workshops on all manner of creative and lifestyle pursuits.

• Cass Micheli, Shevy Hanson and Madeline Broadhurst hope to carpet the Australian War Memorial in crocheted and knitted poppies. Photo by
Milly Micheli

So far she’s found tutors to run quick courses on jewellery, croquet, authors’ talks, flash writing, tiny hoop embroidery and even a whale-watching trip that saw participants turn around and paint the giant mammals in watercolours.

“With the original founders Chester Garcia and Matt Branagan, they were in a pub looking at all the people staring into their phones and they thought there must be something they could do to get them back,” Ms Hanson says.

Ms Hanson, a Melville resident, said she became interested in the 5000 Poppies project because her grandfather had been a WWII veteran and the centenary of the end of WWI hostilities is approaching.

She’s holding non-profit workshops on the first Wednesday of every month until the goal of getting 60,000 poppies nationally has been reached.

by STEVE GRANT