Event
Regenerative Textiles – Fibre Flax for the Future webinar
For the last three years, triallists in Scotland and England have been sowing, growing, hand-harvesting and processing fibre flax, with the aim of growing a network to re-establish a regenerative textile (particularly linen) supply chain in the UK.
This Innovative Farmers webinar will look at the results of the field lab, the different stages of flax seed to finished linen, and explore how a very simple variety trial rapidly evolved into a much wider project to include sowing, retting, seed sourcing, and processing, and went from 4 farm sites to including 30 community plots.
Attendees will hear from triallists Jossie Ellis from Lauriston Farm and Rosie Bristow of Phantassie Farm/ Fantasy Fibre Mill (Rosie is processing the flax grown in the trial into yarn), and explore the wider UK and European context with well-known flax grower and designer Zoe Gilbertson.
Agenda
12.30 – Welcome & Introductions
12.35 – Overview of the fibre flax field lab & results
12.55 – Jossie Ellis: A grower’s perspective
13.15 – Rosie Bristow: Processing flax at farm scale
13.35 – Zoe Gilbertson: Scaling up processing
13.55 – Q&A and panel discussion
14.30 – Close
Attendees are encouraged to bring their questions to the panel through the Q&A, where there will be plenty of time for discussion.
Speakers and panellists:
Colleen McCulloch is a Senior Farming and Land Use Manager at Soil Association Scotland, and Coordinator of the flax field lab.
Rosie Bristow is a farmer and flax enthusiast (spinner and weaver), and co-founder of Fantasy Fibre Mill in East Lothian, currently doing a PHD in Engineering and Textiles at Heriot Watt University. Rosie has been part of the fibre flax field lab since the second growing season in 2024.
Jossie Ellis is a grower in the market garden at Lauriston Farm in Edinburgh, a hundred-acre farm run by a workers cooperative that is focused on food growing, biodiversity, and community. Jossie has been part of the fibre flax field lab since the first growing season in 2023.
Zoe Gilbertson is a designer, consultant, artist and educator, working at the intersections of fashion, fibre farming and enterprise; exploring how livelihoods focusing on collaboration, the commons, ecology and bioregionalism could support a new fibre and textile economy in the UK.
