Moon Landing: Weaving Memory and Music at Canterbury Cathedral

This summer, a breathtaking contemporary installation will bring the story of the 1969 moon landing to life through woven thread and musical score, all within the historic setting of Canterbury Cathedral. Opening 9 June 2025, Moon Landing is a collaborative artwork by British textile artist Margo Selby and award-winning composer Helen Caddick, celebrating the unsung women whose weaving skills helped make the moon landing possible.

Moon Landing woven installation and musical score. Helen-Caddick and Margo-Selby.

Suspended near the Cathedral’s Trinity Chapel, Selby’s striking 16-metre hand-woven textile is paired with Caddick’s original musical composition, scored for strings. Together, they form an immersive dialogue of colour, rhythm, and sound that honours the women who crafted the integrated circuits and memory cores that powered the Apollo spacecraft.

Margo Selby, whose textile art practice sits at the intersection of craft, design, and fine art, is renowned for her vibrant handwoven pieces characterised by their rhythmic geometries and bold use of colour. Working from her studio in Whitstable, just a short drive from Canterbury Cathedral, Selby transforms the logic of the loom into powerful visual statements. Alongside her art practice, she collaborates with industry partners to design textiles for a wide range of applications.

Moon Landing (detail), Margo Selby.

In Moon Landing, Selby draws on composer Helen Caddick’s evocative score - an orchestral work filled with rich textures and rhythmic impulses. Known for her distinctive and powerful compositional style, Caddick often works from unusual source material, translating conceptual stimuli into intricate musical works. In this case, her score echoes the binary logic of weaving and the historic connections between music, memory, and pattern.

Sound and colour. Selby and Caddick's designs on the studio table. 

Together, the artists have created a piece that explores the mathematical precision and expressive possibilities of both disciplines. Selby’s textile reflects the shifts and intervals found in Caddick’s music: stripes and blocks of colour move in a stepping motion across the weave, like notes across a musical stave. This shared rhythm becomes a bridge between music and textile, technology and tradition, innovation and ancestry.

Their collaborative process honours generations of craftswomen - from the Navajo women who helped weave Apollo's guidance systems to the Huguenot weavers who shaped Britain’s textile history. The installation becomes both a tribute and a transformation, bringing forgotten female ingenuity into the light.

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Further Information:

Exhibition Details
9 June – 31 August 2025
Canterbury Cathedral, Kent, CT1 2EH

Admission: Included with Cathedral admission or pass. Kids go free.

Visit the Artist’s Studio
Get a behind-the-scenes look at how moon landing came to life. The Margo Selby Studio, where the textile was woven, is open to visitors Monday to Friday, 10am–4pm.

Margo Selby Studio
114 Joseph Wilson Industrial Estate
Whitstable, CT5 2BA

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Image Credits:

LEAD: Moon Landing at Canterbury Cathedral. Image courtesy of Margot Selby.