The grass Labyrinth at Lyngford Park in Priorswood area of North Taunton was created for the “Pride in Priorswood’ festival. This labyrinth is a 6-path design, with a pattern that echoes the ‘Indian Labyrinth’ that I taped out on the floor of the gallery for the ‘Into the Labyrinth’ exhibition at Lighthouse two years ago. It’s a beautiful circular shape with smooth curves and turns. The diameter is approximately 10m.
Fellow artist, Christopher Jelley, and I created it in just a few hours using a bag of flour, a piece of string and a strimmer. It’s legacy will go on much longer – we ran a whole day of labyrinth events during the festival, but since then the labyrinth has been used every day by local children. Running races on it, doing silly walks and doing it backwards were popular on the day, especially anything that involved ‘winning’. The grass labyrinth was a space on which to do battle, to prove who’s fastest on the turns and to challenge friends and families to join in, if they dared. I lost track of how many timed races we’d done, and I lost track of time – the afternoon went by in a blur of speedy children.
Lyngford Park Labyrinth from Christopher Jelley on Vimeo.
The feedback has been fantastic, not least from Taunton Parks Department, who are now looking after these new strange pathways through the grass. It turns out they used to mow a maze in the grass every summer in another park nearby- I hope they can keep this one going for as long as possible…
visit the Labyrinth in Lyngford Park – it’s open to all and accessible 24-7 – and it’s free.
ps. and of course, you can’t actually get lost in a labyrinth.
