Luke Jerram: A good yarn

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1:38Welcome to the documentary In the Studio from the BBC World Service. I'm Julian May and this is the series that pushes open the doors and goes into the places where the world's most inventive artists are at work.

1:58That's the huge door of the workshop in Bradford in the north of England where the artist Luke Jerram is creating his latest work which is called A Good Yarn.

2:15the door slides back to reveal a skeletal spherical framework we've been tasked to fabricate a three meter diameter metal sphere that's going to form the basis of luke jerem's a good yarn luke's working with a team of ingenious engineers they can make practically anything. It seems absolutely massive here whereas I know that if you put it out on the street it will shrink by about 20 percent so it's funny how artworks change like that. It's all steel, steel rod, all welded together. It's quite a handsome thing. It's a very splendid thing just it is and what are you going to do now? Yeah so the next stage is wrapping this entire three meter sphere with a kilometer of rope.

3:02It's going to be quite a journey. Yeah a lot of fun though. So much fun that I'm not going to remain an impartial observer. I'm going to join in. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. The story of A Good Yarn begins months earlier, 200 miles away in Bristol, in the west of England, where Luke Jerram's base is a studio behind another impressive door.

3:36This place is over 100 years old. This is Paintworks in Bristol. There's an old paint factory, and it's where I test ideas out and store artworks as well, really. This is my main warehouse, and then I've got an office just around the corner. Explain to me a little bit about what you do. Yes, so I create installation artworks. We tour them around the world. Around 100 exhibitions now each year in about 30 countries. so working all around the world maybe two exhibitions opening each week at the moment which is slightly crazy One of your projects, an early project is something called Play Me I'm Yours Play Me I'm Yours is a street piano project we ended up installing about 2 ,000 pianos in about 70 cities all around the world often decorated by local artists and now you see pianos in train stations and airports all around the world so we must have been doing something right.

4:35Something really nice about giving an opportunity for other people to be creative. So with the street piano project we had a girl come up and play the piano and a guy said, oh how do you play that? And they ended up teaching each other because they were on the same commute. Anyway they fell in love and got married as a consequence of the project which was really nice. So I was invited to the wedding where they had the street piano at the wedding which was really fun. You know, the street piano project has led to all these sort of real-life outcomes. So it's really cool. So I really like those artworks that have this sort of possibility to go in all sorts of unusual places, and that's one of the reasons I like being an artist, is you can create these things and you don't know what's going to happen.

5:24There's another aspect to your art as well. Rather than people taking part in it, they just gaze in awe and wonder at these things that you have created. Yeah, I'm interested in a sense of science and science communication. And so people might have heard or seen imagery of my giant moon and earth sculptures that have been touring the world for the last few years. This is called the Museum of the Moon. But the Museum of the Moon is the moon, really. so yeah the museum of the moon is a sculpture of the moon seven meters in diameter and it's all made out of nasa topographic data so it's a giant sphere and it's internally illuminated and it allows the public to see every crater and valley and mountain in perfect detail and we're suspending this in cathedrals or we might put it in a swimming pool so you can swim out under the moon we've toured it all around the world and presented it in all sorts of different contexts and wherever it goes we find out about what the moon means in that culture humanity has been staring at the moon for something like 200 000 years so the moon's inspired music and poetry and religion mythologies in every culture right around the world so it has this universal appeal but actually i'm working on a new project and i can show you the the beginnings of that in the in the office on the other side of paintworks

6:51we've come round the corner to Luke's office where there's another fantastic wooden door on the table you have what looks like some old scarves plaited this is a new artwork I'm working on for Bradford the UK capital of culture Bradford's got this amazing history of fabric production the whole city is full of mills it's an amazing place and so i was asked to come up with a new artwork for them i had this idea that we would take discarded pieces of fabric and turn it into rope by cutting it up into strips we've collected the stories of this the fabric that had been donated and then we'd need about a kilometer of rope and then we'll wrap it up to make a giant yarn ball so this giant sculpture is going to be about three meters across a giant yarn ball and then the public will be able to then roll this down the streets of Bradford as a sort of public artwork celebrating their history and culture.

7:52My name is Shnaz Gulzar and I am the creative director of Bradford UK City of Culture 2025. Every year different British cities pitch proposals to the government and one wins that title, UK City of Culture. With this comes funding,£15 million to Bradford from the state and more from elsewhere. There are four aims, through culture and art to drive economic and social change, to foster a sense of community, to celebrate the cultural identity of the area and to leave a legacy, a long-term benefit. Bradford, as City of Culture, commissioned Luke Jerram to create a good yarn It's a place rich in history and industrial heritage Once upon a time Bradford was known as Woolopolis and produced two thirds of the world's wool and that huge heritage and that wealth that was once here is seen you can see it in the buildings, you can see it in the mills some that have been repurposed and others that are still stood as monuments to their past.

9:08By 1836, there were 73 mills in Bradford, with almost 3 ,000 power looms weaving woolen cloth at great speed. Bradford's wool industry employed 70 ,000 and drew people to the city first from Ireland and Germany, there's an area known as Little Germany, and then, in the 1960s, from Pakistan. But since then, there's been a steep decline in the textile industry, leading to unemployment, poverty and social unrest. There are hopes that Bradford is recovering now, and as UK City of Culture, regaining confidence. The energy of the communities and the people who had come first to work in the mills, like my father.

9:57my father came from Pakistan, Kashmir in Pakistan and came here to work in the mills in Saltz Mill, that was his first job fast forward 60 years you've got next generation, third, fourth generations who have given and created an energy and a dynamism and an identity for this city and district projecting it into the future Shemaz, turning to Luke Jerram's artwork a good yarn why do you think that's enough if you like an appropriate and apt work for Bradford City of Culture? Well first of all I just love the idea of a giant ball of yarn being rolled through the streets that have been built on the back of wool literally the infrastructure the buildings is the reason why this city and district is the scale it is so it felt really important to create a work that had meaning but was also incredibly playful that was visible that was public put on a carabiner clip i'm literally going to just clip it on to this bracket which fixed on the wall i've used a cable tie to tie it three strands together at the top and then that allows me to then take the fabric and start plaiting it well you just plait it like you might plait your daughter's hair yeah yeah that's right and we've got yeah three different colors here and once it's all plaited together it'll make a rope it's probably about yeah seven centimeters wide and we need yeah need a kilometer of this to make it work and then we'll use that to then create this giant yarn ball i also love how luke's work brings together history heritage the world, people who are new to the city, people who have lived here for decades, people who were born and brought up here.

11:53A whole range of workshops are going to be taking place in Bradford with the community making lengths of plaited rope over the coming months. This yarn is quite literally plaited from the essence, from the fabric of these communities. Luke Jerram, your new artwork that you're beginning here has a great title. It's called A Good Yarn. Now, yarn is rope or string, and you are making a very good yarn here. It looks really lovely and strong and texturally very interesting. but there's another meaning to a good yarn that's an expression for a good story a rather unlikely story why did you choose that title yes we're making yarn here but actually all this fabric will have stories related to the cloth which will cut up into strips and make this this rope that represents somehow the people of Bradford well I went to school and I left when I was part two I had to, my mother made me, she wanted me to earn money, you see, bring money in.

13:07We had no choice, you see, we had to do what we were told. It was strange, you know, but the older women mothered me, you know, they looked after me, which were nice, yeah. Yeah, but I liked working at Mill, I liked the job I did. It's going to create a set of memories and a set of stories for the town. an experience for the public that will be passed on through the town as a story. You know, they'll always remember the day. Do you remember when that giant yarn ball came down and we rolled it down the street and they go, what? You know, oh yeah, yeah. You know, so you're left fundamentally with a set of memories.

13:48And for me as an artist, that's my job, is to create memories for a town. What next? What's the next part of this project? yeah so i've created training videos that will show the community there how to plait and make the rope themselves i'm then going to be going up to bradford where we'll be wrapping this rope around a massive armature about a three meter size sort of cage that will be suspended in a studio to create this giant yarn ball i'll be doing that in the next couple of weeks it's rather exciting and i'll come along and see you in bradford yeah it should be good

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16:00This is the documentary, In the Studio, from the BBC World Service. I'm Julian May, and this is the door of Eddie Keane's workshop in Bradford, opening to reveal the huge sphere made of steel bars mentioned at the beginning of the programme. It's the framework for Luke Jerram's new artwork, A Good Yarn, under construction here. It's like a giant hamster cage, isn't it? Massive round ball. Three metres diameter. We're going to start wrapping this kilometre of rope on the top of it. I think it'll probably be over three and a half metres in diameter once it's actually wrapped. and it will create the illusion that it's a giant yarn ball and it's made of solid rope.

16:45Because if it was just solid rope you wouldn't be able to move it would you? No it would weigh probably about five tons something like that. So yeah it's going to be interesting to see whether this thing can be moved how it moves on the street. You don't want to go down a hill do you? No nice and flat please yeah. Near the door of the warehouse there's great big piles of plaited yarn all different colours all different textures. There's been workshops running for the last month or so across Bradford, creating this kilometre of rope that we're going to be using to make the giant yarn ball. Luke Jerram's main collaborators are musicians, the Broken Orchestra, and Bloomin' Buds, a theatre company whose mission is to give access to art and opportunities to make it to working-class communities, like the one where they're based in the north of Bradford.

17:36and it's through their streets that the giant ball of yarn will be rolled for the first time. We've been organising the workshops with different groups that we facilitate and we run, with our art group, with our drama group. Ashstone is here plaiting some more of the yarn and ashes from blooming buds. Our participants have been plaiting fabric, basically people pitching in and just enjoying fabric plaiting or sewing at the end as well, just to clean it up a bit. The whole community's become enjoined. I wanted to be a sewer, but I thought, mill, you always got more money in the mill. And, you know, we used to have good trips.

18:17Oh, we used to go to Blackpool mostly. Right, I enjoyed it. I mean, we had good times, but I still liked sewing, so I had to sew in my own time and that, you know. It's a massive team effort. Every item of clothing and fabric will have a story, and we're collecting those stories as a part of this project. My name is Pat Dooner, and I'm from the Burrican Orchestra. We're sound artists based in the north of England. We were approached by the Bradford 25 team to work on a soundscape for Luke Jerram's A Good Yarn project. Working with people that participate in the Blooming Buds community groups, we identified a number of people who had interesting stories to tell about fabric and their connection with the mill industry who would then turn these stories into a musical-based soundscape.

19:06Well, I was 15, just before my 16th birthday and I went to work at a place at Thornton Road. The way that the machines were set up, you could face each other and you could maybe have a little conversation We then visited a number of working mills and recorded the inner workings of the machines Every time it went over there used to be wheels at each end and it used to be going round like that and it'd just have like a flap sound as it went over the wheel and stood at both ends so it'd be like These recordings form the basis of the soundscape and along with simple layers of music have helped create the backdrop for us to weave the stories together into one coherent piece, symbolising every strand, every weave, every knot and every plait.

20:06When you go to boxing, you've got to be smart. Dress up as you're fully dressed. Dress how you want to. And my trainer told me when you're training boxing, make sure you're always smart and uptight. I really enjoy making artworks that leave space for other people to be creative. That adds huge value. You know, I could have knocked this artwork out in my own studio back in Bristol, but there's something really beautiful about having it made here by local people, with local fabric, with all those stories embedding a sense of ownership and culture.

20:41Yeah, so the next stage is wrapping this entire three-metre sphere with a kilometre of rope. You've got a bit of wire with a loop at each end and that hooks around something that spins and that twists it around the spoke of the sphere. Yeah, that's right. It's beautiful. We'll get in the hang of it. It's quite a fun process.

21:12So Luke and the team are rotating the big sphere and attaching the rope with these wire tags. I don't quite know what I'm going to do with. I've been working with Luke Jerram today. We've been attaching the yarn, the rope, made of plaited pieces of material that people have donated. And as we've been doing this, we've been coming across things like children's bedsheets or material from a ballet skirt, a tutu, or a sari, or someone's shirt.

21:52and you realise that what we're doing actually is plaiting people's lives and attaching people's lives to this big ball that will wail through the streets where they live and I find that rather moving Can we rotate? Yeah, right there if you want For the last three days I've been walking through the streets of Bradford to the workshop where Luke Jerram and his team have been creating the giant ball of yarn. On my way, I pass a big stone building with a sign saying Yarn Mill Shop, open to the public. This is where people would have bought the kind of fabric that Luke is using that would have been made in the local mills.

22:39Sadly, it's not open to the public anymore. Like so many of those mills, the shop has closed down. the windows are broken and there are bushes growing out of the walls it's a fine building though one that needs a new purpose are you pleased with your work? yeah, very happy with it actually yeah, it's looking great Luke, it's the third day of wrapping the ball of yarn where have you got to? we've completely wrapped the first layer which is brilliant and now we're doing these large diagonal bands across it. It's like someone has wound up a ball of yarn really efficiently and then they're doing diagonals around it.

23:29It's starting to look really good. I think it looks absolutely fantastic and I think it does depict the wool and industry of Bratford being a massive ball of wool and it's a colourful thing. I've had a bit of experience in the wool and industry myself as a young lad working in a knitting wool mill, balling and banding so balls of wool, I've seen a few of them I'm really pleased with the way it's come out so far, it's very beautiful it's something about making spheres, I've realised there's rather a lot of my artworks that involve spheres there's a universality about it, there's a sort of, yeah, it's very profound And something beautiful about making spheres, they resonate.

24:14You can think of them in terms of water droplets. It's now three months since I caught a train west to Bristol to talk to the artist Luke Jerram about the beginnings of his latest work, A Good Yarn. It's a month since I took a train north to Bradford to record Luke and his team making it and to work on it myself. I'm now on a train again to Bradford because today the people who've plaited the fabric rope and created the giant ball that is a good yarn will roll it through the streets where they live. This is the big day for the big ball, the culmination of their work and the completion of the artwork.

24:58I'm very excited. Next station stop is Bradford Interchange.

25:11so the giant yarn ball has just been taken off the trailer it's here on the street we've been waiting sort of yeah about a year for this for this final moment did you did you do some of this I did. We all did, Pippa. There's a gaggle of little girls here who were some of the people who were plaiting their yarn. It's really lovely and it's specially big. And huge. Do you know where there's any beans? No, I'm very pleased with it, I think. And so they should be. It looks extraordinary. All the colours of this three metre giant yarn ball are sort of popping in the sunlight. There's gold fabric in there and yellow and blue and green.

25:54Every colour imaginable. and it's so exciting to see it here on the hottest day of the year. We're really proud that it's so colourful. I'm with Katie Taylor, the Artistic Director of Blooming Buds Theatre Company, closely involved with the creation of this. You know, when we were making the ball of yarn, it was such a challenge to get enough fabric. We kind of had to use as much as we could get our hands on, regardless of what it looked like. But we really tried to balance some of the greys and the whites with colour and that's paid off because it's such a beautiful, colourful installation. And I think that's what tells the story of Bradford, that Bradford is lots of cultures, lots of people, lots of different communities all woven together.

26:36A touch I really like is this giant knitting needle that penetrates the entire thing and it's about 10 foot long. We're going to be using it to help steer this giant yarn board down the street. And then on the other side of the street, we've got this incredibly brightly coloured drumming band that are going to be performing as this ball rotates and is slowly rolled down the street. So, yeah, it's quite a sight to behold. In fact, here they come. The drawing band, which is going to escort the ball of yarn, is called Katoomba. There's more than 20 of them. It's going to be quite a sound, I think.

27:13Getting ready?

27:26Some of the little children who plaited some of this yarn are now pushing the ball up the hill. I'm very impressed.

27:40The band has divided onto each side of the road to form a guard of honour through which a good yarn is being rolled now.

27:55Katie Taylor people are always talking about legacy, what will remain after something like this, what do you think the legacy will be for you and your community here in Bradford Town I think communities like this have got lots of challenges and I think an event like this just sort of shed spotlight that a community like this is worth coming to with something like this and they feel seen and they feel heard, especially for young people who need to see artistic installation, they need to see events like this to be inspired and to have ambition with the band. It's very hard for children to attend arts workshops and music lessons and things like that, so I think this kind of thing the legacy is that hopefully we inspire young people and they keep fighting against those barriers that they have to access this kind of thing themselves.