Poppies at Paradise
By Caroline Rudge, commercial manager at MEPC
This year, we wanted to do something slightly different to help us mark Remembrance Day. And so we decided to encourage people to create their very own knitted and crochet poppies that we could then use to adorn the estate.
With almost a million people walking through Paradise every month, we know we have a captive audience out there and after putting the call our to all of our estate occupiers, as well as local communities across Birmingham and the Black Country, the call for poppies was definitely answered – with almost 700 delivered and now on display at Paradise!
This tremendous response has allowed us to create our completely new display of poppies which adorn our hoarding at the end of Edmund Street and fronting Centenary Way. We hope the display is one that feels reverential and inclusive, colourful and meaningful, and will catch the eye of many who walk past it.
As well as working with occupiers across Paradise, we also reached out to the wider community to produce as many poppies as possible. Much of this work has been carried out with Arts Therapies UK, a local charity aimed at alleviating mental health issues in and around the region by using art as a way to treat loneliness and vulnerability.
Their organiser, Rebecca Fellows, has worked tirelessly to help individuals and groups get together in local community groups, churches and libraries to deliver both knitted and crocheted poppies which have made such an amazing display. By asking people to help create the poppies themselves, this was an important way for those who perhaps can’t come along to the day itself to still feel involved.
Rebecca explains:
“At least thirty people in the community have helped us create more than 300 crocheted and knitted poppies over the past few months.
The poppies have given a lot of people a lot of joy to create and everyone involved can’t wait to see them on display at Paradise.
“Our work at Arts Therapies UK helps improve mental health and bring vulnerable people together in a social setting. The poppy sessions have helped people do just that, as well as to communicate, get together and enjoy themselves at the same time.”
We hope the display now on view at the end of Centenary Way will encourage all of us to pause and reflect on the true meaning of Remembrance Day and proving food for thought for the thousands of people that pass by the poppies every day.
Remembrance Day has been an important part of our national life for more than a hundred years. It is a day for reflection and remembrance for all who have given their lives in war and conflict.
First held on 11 November 1919 – the first anniversary of the end of World War I in 1918 – the day has become an important national day that resonates not just across the UK, but also in dozens of other countries around the world, from India and Australia to France and New Zealand, Canada and Pakistan.
This year we have involved as many people as we could in creating our poppies and we hope you will join us in Chamberlain Square at 11am on Tuesday 11 November for a two-minute silence followed by our traditional bugle call of the Last Post.
These traditions have taken on their own dynamic over the years, and this is now our fifth Remembrance Day event to take place at Paradise since Chamberlain Square reopened in 2020. And as more and more occupiers and people take up home across the estate, we hope our commemorations will continue to reach out to more and more people with each passing year.
