For Carlisle Cathedral’s 900th anniversary, it was decided that as many people, and especially schools, had not visited the cathedral, it would go to them in the form of a tent, specifically a 6m wide bell tent. I was asked to design and make a labyrinth that would fit in the tent, that could pack down into a bag and be transported and set up with it.
I used heavy-duty fire-retardant canvas, sewing together pieces to make two semi-circles, then made templates from glued-together sheets of newspaper to draw the circles for the path. Each side was so large, I had to work on one half at a time on the floor of our single garage, rolling, moving and unrolling so I could work on a section at a time. I used acrylic paint for flexibility, in a blue with gold stars to match the ceiling of the cathedral.
This is the labyrinth spread out on our driveway. You can see from the damp patches on the tarmac why I had to do the painting of it in the garage – we had so much rain that month.
And this is it in use inside the tent. It is a uni-directional labyrinth, because there would not be enough room for people to walk to the centre then back. The two halves lace up on the line that runs horizontally from the base of the central pole
