Luke Jerram: A Good Yarn in Bradford and Gaia in Harrogate as artist exhibits in Yorkshire

“We've had to select the route quite carefully,” says Luke Jerram, the man behind the brilliantly bizarre public art spectacle.

"We did do a test roll in a cemetery last week and actually it went fine. We tested it on a slope and it was okay. I was a bit worried that we were going to have a runaway giant yarn ball taking out people and crashing into architecture. But no, it was fine. That was really good because it weighs 525 kilos, so it weighs over half a tonne. So we do have to be slightly careful.”

Jerram and the Bloomin' Buds theatre company brought together more than 2,500 locals to work on the project, called A Good Yarn, to celebrate the city’s textile heritage as part of the Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture year.

The piece has been created using donated clothes and fabrics, which have been plaited into a rope stretching more than a kilometre and, with the help of community groups in the BD10 postcode, then wound into a yarn ball that is three metres high and wide.

A soundscape has also been created by the Broken Orchestra, using stories and memories of the region’s textile heritage, recorded during public rope-making workshops. It will be pushed through the streets during the free event on Saturday, July 12, rolling down Ravenscliffe Avenue between Bowness Avenue and Falkland Road/Langdale Road from 3pm to 3.45pm, accompanied by the Katumba drumming group. Bristol-based Jerram, 50, specialises in this kind of art – big, immersive, people-powered displays of unity.

He says: "These artworks often become completed with the presence of the public. If we didn't have the public involved with this giant yarn ball, it would just be a ball on the street. There’s something quite nice about allowing people to participate. It’s something that people will remember, certainly.” A Good Yarn isn’t the only work to be visiting Yorkshire this month, as his earth replica artwork Gaia will be at St Wilfrid's Church from today as part of the HACS Harrogate Music Festival. A run of six Gigs at Gaia, featuring solo recitals, ensembles and orchestral performances, will also be hosted at the space.

The touring work measures seven metres in diameter and is created from 120dpi (dots per inch) detailed NASA imagery of the world, with each centimetre of the internally lit sculpture equating to 18km of the Earth’s surface.

Gaia – which in Greek Mythology is the personification of the Earth – essentially provides people with the opportunity to see our planet floating in three dimensions.

And, by standing 211 metres away from it, the public will be able to see the Earth as it appears from the moon. The installation aims to create a sense of the Overview Effect, which was first described by author Frank White in 1987.

"(Astronauts) experience the awe and wonder of looking down at the earth for the first time, often becoming slightly overwhelmed by it,” is how Jerram describes it. “And in fact, when astronauts return to the Earth, they often become environmental campaigners as a consequence of that experience of being able to see the Earth as a sort of fragile blue planet floating in the blackness of space.”

Jerram’s works often have other events happening beside them, such as yoga lessons, other art programmes, dance routines or lectures on climate change.

He says: “I like leaving space for other people to be creative around these artworks and then you get a real sense of ownership and there's lots of unexpected, exciting outcomes as well.” Helios, his sun artwork, will be at Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire in October.

It might be Jerram we have to thank for pianos becoming a normal sight in places such as railway stations – one of his well known early works was installing the instruments in the street, and says he ended up putting about 2,000 of them in about 70 cities around the world. He works with a team of four based in Bristol, but has exhibited all over the world – and believes he will do so for the 1000th time this year.

“I like inventing things and testing things out and making stuff,” says Jerram, who is an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Biosciences at the University of Sheffield. “It's a mixture of hybrid skills that I've had to bring together to be able to do what I'm doing.

"I was a child who would take things apart to see what TV was made of, or the radio, and of course they would never really work properly again.” Although it suits Bradford, Jerram meant for the idea behind A Good Yarn to launch in Australia.

“Interestingly, I initially proposed this artwork for Sydney Festival last year and we got quite close to getting it commissioned.

"They've got a long history of exporting wool and, interestingly, the wool that would have been exported from Sydney in Australia, a lot of it would have come to Bradford to go into the mills. So there's a really interesting connection there.

"Anyway, that sort of fell through, they decided to have something else instead, but we had a lovely proposal ready to go, which fitted beautifully with Bradford.”

And the people of West Yorkshire have taken it to their hearts, donating around 1,000 items of clothing and fabric: surplus saris, ex-boyfriends’ jackets and even an old wedding dress, says Jerram. Now it’s almost time to roll out the end result. Jerram says: "All those people who've participated, I'm sure they’d like to see if they can spot their item of clothing rolling down the street.”

Watch out on those hills.