Luke Jerram: A good yarn

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 4 August 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Luke Jerram creates spectacular art installations all over the world. He reached millions of people with his work Play Me, I’m Yours, inviting anyone to make music on the 2,000 pianos he had placed on the streets of more than 70 cities. He has also created large sculptures of the moon, the planet Mars and the sun, which were suspended in spaces like cathedrals so that visitors could admire the celestial bodies up close. Julian May follows the creation of the Jerram's latest work, made for Bradford, this year’s UK City of Culture. A Good Yarn plays on the double meaning of the word “yarn” – both a length of thread and a story. It looks like a giant multi-coloured ball of wool, three metres high, which will be rolled through the city’s streets. Luke Jerram collaborates with Bradford residents to create a kilometre-long rope, made from woollen fabric donated by the public or from second-hand shops. This episode of The Documentary, comes to you from In the Studio, exploring the processes of the world’s most creative people.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service.
0:07.0	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.
0:17.0	That's the huge door of the workshop in Bracken. at work.
0:26.5	That's the huge door of the workshop in Bradford in the north of England,
0:31.0	where the artist Luke Jerem is creating his latest work,
0:33.1	which is called A Good Yarn. The door slides back to reveal a skeletal spherical framework.
0:46.1	We've been tasked to fabricate a three-meter diameter metal sphere
0:52.1	that's going to form the basis of Luke Jem's a good yarn.
0:57.3	Luke's working with a team of ingenious engineers.
1:00.9	They can make practically anything.
1:03.0	It seems absolutely massive here,
1:05.1	whereas I know that if you put it out on the street,
1:07.1	it will shrink by about 20%.
1:08.7	So it's funny how artworks change like that. It's all steel, steel rod,
1:15.0	all welded together. It's quite a handsome thing. It's a very splendid thing just it is. And what are you
1:20.2	going to do now? Yeah, so the next stage is wrapping this entire three metre sphere with a kilometre of rope.
1:26.6	That's going to be quite a journey.
1:28.3	Yeah, a lot of fun though.
1:29.6	So much fun that I'm not going to remain an impartial observer.
1:33.8	I'm going to join in.
1:37.7	But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
1:41.9	The story of a good yarn begins months earlier, 200 miles away in Bristol in the west of England,
	...

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