Zoe Gilbertson

Working at smaller scales means that the benefits of additional crop rotations, processing mills and artisan-micro-maker labs could be spread throughout the country, bringing greater resilience and livelihoods to rural areas. Energy demands would be lower and distributed as processing would be localised and require limited transport.

I invite everyone to examine their wardrobes and their own perspectives, to develop unique ways forward and tentatively build a new clothing culture. This may seem difficult or even impossible but what is fashionable starts in the mind, something that is within all our power.

Situated within a bioregion populated by a multitude of small-scale nested ecosystems that grow food and create useful materials alongside textile fibres the fashion farm will require integration into wider production systems and seasons. It will require learning to be we not I. This dream is too big for one person and a single farm, it is something we must manifest together.

We can create conditions of emergence for a democratic, cooperative, commons-based, ecological clothing culture. To achieve this, international knowledge exchange will be sought alongside local experimentation. With determination, cooperation, and careful planning, new fibre systems will be possible.

A healthy ecosystem is diverse and small-scale manufacturing systems have the potential to contain much more diversity than industrial levels of production. I use bread and linen – basic daily items of food and textiles to illustrate this position.