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Dani Marano on career pivots and starting a choir

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The Nugget
February 27, 2026

★ Dani Marano on career pivots and starting a choir ★

Dani Marano with Pepperoni

Before life required monetising, Dani Marano enjoyed cutting up magazines and singing in harmony.

At 30, after a run of corporate jobs that didn’t fit, she decided that might be useful information.

“I didn’t like work,” she says. “I didn’t like where I worked. I didn’t like how many hours I had to do. I really struggled.”

The turning point was a question from her partner, Alex.

“What do you want to do as a job? Don’t even think about it. What is it?”

“I want to be a florist,” she replied. No hesitation.

“Okay,” he said. “When we get back from this holiday, that’s what you’re doing.”

And that was that.

She enrolled at TAFE. Got a job with an events florist. Then a shop florist. Then a grower. She worked across the industry, figuring out which part of floristry suited her best.

“I was like, I’m going to work out where I fit. And I knuckled down and made it happen.”

There’s a version of this story, possibly starring Matt Damon, where the moral is “back yourself”.

But the creative life that Dani has built is really about going back to what brought her pure joy as a kid.

As a teenager, she and her friends were obsessed with cutting up magazines and making little books and cards for each other. Hanging out and making stuff, in a parallel play kind of way.

The shift to working seasonally as a freelance flower stylist meant she had more time to do what she loved.

Today, her collage work is meticulous. Everything is cut by hand. She lets compositions sit for weeks before committing to glue. The imagery leans toward nature layered with classical architecture — ancient Greece and Rome.

“I let the elements speak to me,” she says. “I’m not interested in being overly trendy.”

Lucky for us plebs, Dani has collaborated with Holly from Pins and Needles on a gorgeous line of hats. They feature Dani's collage pieces, printed on cotton patches and hand sewn onto duck hunting caps. Chef's kiss.

The cool thing about organising life around the things you love is that they have a tendency to snowball. 

After moving from Melbs to Chewton — a decision that followed meeting Alex in a hot chip queue at Laneway Festival — Dani went looking for a choir that sang the kind of music she actually wanted to sing. Indie folk with harmonies. No feather boas or jazz hands.

It didn’t exist.

So she did the Castlemaine thing and started one (along with her neighbour James McGuffie of Forest Creek Records)

Their choir, Forest Creek Folk, now draws around 60 singers a season, working in three- to five-part harmonies on artists like Bon Iver, Gillian Welch and Fleet Foxes.

“There’s something about being in a room full of people singing, especially in harmony,” she says. “When you get it right, the energy is incredible.”

Running it is admin-heavy and time-consuming, but she’s clear on why she does it.

“It’s about showing up for myself and for others. I’ve met so many people through this choir who I don’t know how I would live my life without, now.”

This term, the choir is working on a special artist residency with acclaimed singer-songwriter, Lior. Over eight weeks, the crew is learning five of his songs in preparation for a live performance at Forest Creek Fest at the Theatre Royal on Sunday 22 March. The choir will join Lior for one dedicated rehearsal before performing with him on stage. How major is that?

Dani’s life is now built around creative projects: floristry, collage, music, design. It looks like the dream from the outside, but she's quick to point out that making a creative life work is mostly logistics.

“My life is pretty fun,” she says. “But it is a lot of work to try and balance it all.

“It comes back to the seasons,” she says.

“Sometimes I’m really busy and I’m like, what am I doing to myself? And then the next season is much more chill. You just have to roll with it.”

❀ Can you help? ❀

The community pantry on the veranda at Safe Space has been really popular. So much so that it needs frequent restocking.

It’s always open, so you can donate canned or packaged goods any time you are walking by 74 Mostyn St.

♡˖ Events ˖♡

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