Case Study: Homegrown Homespun
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Furrowing a sustainable future for fashion
Eco-I North West helps sustainable fashion project make the case for a regenerative local textile system
The fashion and textile industry is under growing pressure to reduce its environmental and social impact.
Reliant on fossil fuels and intensive agriculture, it is responsible for 10% of all global carbon emissions and staggering levels of waste throughout all stages of supply chains. All of which have adverse effects on communities and biodiversity.
With demand for fashion only increasing, the modern way clothes are produced cannot continue if the sector is to achieve its net zero emissions aims.
Meanwhile, with increased consumer awareness of the devastating environmental impact of the fast fashion phenomenon and a higher willingness to pay more for sustainable locally-sourced goods, the fashion and textile industry's direction of travel needs to be growing greener and more ethically.
Homegrown Homespun is a ground-breaking fashion project involving designer Patrick Grant’s social enterprise Community Clothing and North West England Fibreshed, a movement of farmers, fashion activists, and textile practitioners interconnecting regenerative textiles and food systems and The Super Slow Way, an arts and cultural programme in East Lancashire,
They have started to explore whether a regenerative local textile system, built on environmentally and socially positive principles, could reintroduce flax and natural indigo growing to Lancashire and create a denim clothing line that brings a multitude of social, environmental and economic benefits to the region.
Now, with the support of research from Lancaster University funded by Eco-I North West, Homegrown Homespun has strengthened the case for a viable, regenerative local textile system.
The Challenge
Justine Aldersey-Williams is a textile designer and teacher. She found her efforts to work ethically and sustainably were thwarted by the globalised system.
Justine became an affiliate of the international organisation Fibershed, which develops solutions for creating soil-to-soil, regionalised textile systems that use local fibre, dye and labour. She established North West England Fibreshed and began exploring the reintroduction of textile crops such as flax, which, for centuries, was widely produced and woven into linen in the UK before imported cotton kick-started the industrial revolution.
Justine connected with Patrick Grant, founder of Community Clothing, a manufacturer of sustainable garments made from responsibly-sourced natural, biodegradable materials, and a well-known advocate of sustainable British fashion.
The collaboration with North West England Fibreshed and The Super Slow Way, offered Community Clothing the opportunity to go one step further to see if they could make clothes here in the UK from the fibres and dyes that can be naturally grown locally.
Together they launched Homegrown Homespun, a pilot project involving the local community in Blackburn to test the feasibility of reintroducing flax growing and processing using natural indigo to the UK in order to create jeans.
A first trial in 2021 proved the concept could work and, in 2022, crops were planted in three further fields with the aim of producing locally-grown, naturally-dyed, linen jeans in time for the British Textile Biennial in September 2023.
But the collaborative needed support in order to explore whether their system could be scaled up to run on an economically sustainable commercial basis whilst maintaining its underpinning environmental and community-based principles.
The Solution
Using funded support from the Eco-I North West programme, Homegrown Homespun was able to secure a Masters by Research student, Helena Pribyl, who embarked on an immersive research project, which saw her literally get her hands dirty.
Helena said: “Homegrown Homespun had proof of concept and were looking at commercial viability and scale, while retaining its environmental and social sustainability ideals.
“My focus was to analyse the barriers and enablers to scaling up this ambitious pilot of low-carbon textile growing and manufacture. This involved research into the economics, feasibility, carbon assessment, and social impact. Using observation and participating research methods, I also joined in with preparing, nurturing and harvesting the crop alongside the volunteers.”
Helena’s report analysed the triple bottom line of economic, social and environmental challenges and offered recommendations of how Homegrown Homespun could tackle some of them independently, and others that would be impossible without collaboration across industry.
The conclusions as to the economic argument for the project, while sobering, also gave cause for optimism.
Despite the region’s rich history of textiles manufacturing, the skills, the infrastructure and machinery needed to produce clothes from raw material to finished goods, no longer exist.
These are the key technological and economic barriers for commercial scale flax and natural indigo industries. But, with investment and time, strong partnerships, and innovative approaches to local businesses, the research supports a gradual re-localisation of production with the acknowledgement of trade-offs between elements of sustainability as part of a long-term, larger vision towards a UK-based sustainable natural textiles industry.
These compromises might include ‘near-shoring’ production from China to Europe at first, until the scale justifies a more localised supply chain, and exploring ‘cross-regional collaboration’ with other community initiatives to accumulate the scale for investments in infrastructure.
In terms of environmental impact, a life cycle assessment estimated that the carbon impact of flax-based denim is a third lower than a pair of standard cotton jeans. This increases to a 50% reduction with near-shoring to a European supply chain.
The Homegrown Homespun project is also having a positive impact socially. Many volunteers described the sense of community that provided support during the COVID-19 pandemic, also highlighting new skills, improved wellbeing, a greater understanding about the origins of their clothes, and an ambition to change their own consumption habits to reduce waste.
Helena said: “While there are some major barriers to the ambitions of scaling up the project, I hope my research gave the team some recommendations and data-based considerations to achieve their vision of sustainable and commercial success over a number of phases.”
The Outcome
The partnership between Community Clothing, North West England Fibreshed and Super Slow Way has learnt a lot from the research.
Laurie Peake, director of The Super Slow Way, said: “Helena produced a tremendously useful piece of research to help us understand the extent of the loss of skills and infrastructure that would allow us to support local low carbon textile production.
"We have shown that flax and indigo can be grown in Lancashire and will continue to learn from our experiences.
"Our biggest challenge is that the UK has lost the skills and machinery to process, spin and weave the flax to create linen. However, this project has connected us to potential solutions and partners in other parts of the country who could help with these challenges.
"It is going to take some time to rebuild those skills and those infrastructures to enable the project to succeed at scale. But this is a long term project and we continue to explore how we could develop systems of scaling up making home-grown clothes in Lancashire."
For the university and research field, Helena’s work is providing new insights into sustainable local fashion that could be relevant elsewhere, and it’s helped grow links between the Centre for Global Eco-Innovation and the Management School, which were both involved in supervising the project.
Professor Mark Stevenson, one of Helena’s two academic supervisors, said: “With its focus on sustainability and supply chains, this research project combined two key strengths of the university, the Centre for Global Eco-Innovation and the Management School.
“Helena has done an incredible amount of work around the lifecycle analysis, the carbon footprint of the supply chain and potential ways to reduce the impact of textiles on the environment.
“This is a good example of moving towards a model that is more sustainable and resilient to the kinds of global economic and supply challenges the world has experienced recently.”
For Helena, she used her academic research skills and interest in environment, society and fashion to secure a job as a research analyst at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a charity looking to accelerate the global transition to a circular economy.
Eco-I North West is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund.
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