Bradford Cathedral’s Legacy Tapestries To Be Unveiled At Launch Event

On Tuesday 3rd February, Bradford Cathedral will launch a newly finished tapestry. The woven textile will go on display alongside a ‘sound tapestry’: a recorded collection of voices and stories.

These artworks were created through a project titled ‘Weaving Stories’, an exciting art and heritage initiative led by Bradford Cathedral as part of their contribution to the UK City of Culture 2025, made possible with funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The Cathedral invited local communities and visitors to co-create a piece of art through a loom installation, where everyone was invited to add a line of material to the woven tapestry.

The tapestry was designed to bring together the rich, shared stories of Bradford’s wool trade—a heritage deeply embedded in the city’s diverse, global communities. And the project is about more than preserving history; it’s about bringing people together, and was created through many collaborations across Bradford’s textile communities. The Bradford Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers gave advice on weaving processes, and spun and dyed the wool used in the tapestry. Bradford wool processing business Howarth Scouring gave Bradford Cathedral the fleeces for free, and the West Riding Stone Carving Association made Yorkshire stone loom weights which are part of the final artwork. The woven artwork was led by Shaeron Caton-Rose, a local visual artist.

The textile will be accompanied by a ‘sound tapestry’ compiled by the sound artist Ellen Sargen. The clips in the sound tapestry were drawn from the people of Bradford, sharing how and why they came here.

The launch event on the 3rd February will bring together the many participants who worked on, funded, and evaluated the project. The event will feature talks from the lead artists on their design processes, as well as from Cathedral staff on the building’s woolen history and the legacy this project will have in its collection. This culminating event will unveil the woolen tapestry in its new position in the Cathedral’s south ambulatory, and celebrate the threads of history, culture, and community that created it.

The tapestry launch event is open to the public and starts at 7pm on Tuesday 3rd February.