Bringing resilience to life through flax

Flax is a wonderful plant that can be turned into many useful materials, but most people know it as linen – something we no longer have the knowledge or capacity to manufacture in the UK. During my travels, I researched agriculture, small-scale processing, spinning infrastructure, and textile cooperatives, and connected with projects that prioritise community and the arts over profit.

A key learning was that infrastructure and inspiration, when supported by culture and creativity, can bring a seemingly impossible task to life within a region.

After my Fellowship, I founded a community interest company called Liflad (meaning livelihood in Old English) and began working towards the ambitious goal of revitalising flax and linen production in the UK. I chose to frame this work through three connected themes: culture and creativity, infrastructure and inspiration, and knowledge exchange.

Culture and Creativity

The Fellowship journey was an amazing catalyst. After several years of developing relationships – both literally and metaphorically in the field – it feels like the work we are doing at Liflad is gaining momentum. On the culture and creativity side, we recently secured Heritage Lottery funding – a pretty amazing achievement for a tiny organisation.

We are excited to co-deliver, with Transition Town Totnes, a multi-year project called “Devon Grows Flax”. Work starts now on community building, heritage research, and skill sharing. It will also include craft-based well-being activities, flax education in schools, creative exhibitions, and the development of a community cloth.

Infrastructure and Inspiration

Alongside this, we are launching a new venture called Common Cloth Works, supported by a small foundation that encourages cooperative and ecological activity. Based on a beautiful farm in South Devon, we will demonstrate the cultivation and production of agroecological textiles with the micro-manufacturing of flax fibre into yarn, cloth, and clothing.

We will do this in partnership with our surroundings, experimenting with innovative methods to keep the farm ecosystem in balance, using old and new knowledge to develop replicable, low-impact production processes. Watch this space for Devon-grown linen!

Knowledge Exchange

Through my Fellowship I was also able to strengthen relationships I’d already developed in the UK by founding the UK Bast Fibre Network, and to extend these connections across Europe and beyond. The importance of open knowledge exchange cannot be underestimated when you’re doing something new and challenging.

A few weeks ago, I took another long European train ride, this time to Berlin to join nine brilliant women leading community flax and linen projects across Europe. Over several days we discussed our newly formed network, Flax and Linen Community Europe. We established our values, aims, and planned activities for the coming year, such as a conference at Texture, the world’s leading flax museum, in May 2027.

Liflad also works with a group based in Switzerland that is establishing small scale linen and fibre infrastructure. We call ourselves the European Textile Commons, with all of us working towards similar aims, shared values, small-scale machinery, and locally responsive production methods.

Flax-to-Linen Ecosystem

In my Churchill Fellowship report, I describe a flax-to-linen ecosystem in Nova Scotia, Canada. Recently, Jennifer Green, a key part of that ecosystem, got in touch to say that she is now leading Flax Fibre to Fabric, a four-year government-funded research project to explore the potential for commercial flax production in Atlantic Canada.

Her team includes seven professors from four universities across Eastern Canada, impressed by my report and its conclusions on scale, community, and small-scale supply chains. I was honoured to be considered an expert and once again inspired by the synergy, community, and connections that are continually developing with people sharing flax knowledge around the world.

While each community responds to its own local needs, we are also creating related, context-specific approaches to change. This is how I believe we have to approach change – and what the Churchill Fellowship gave me the impetus to do.

You can follow along with Zoe’s work through her company, Liflad.