Flax Forward is a community-led project celebrating Bridport’s flax-growing heritage and exploring the potential for a sustainable future.

The project will gather and connect knowledge from collections, archives, and community sources, uncovering unrecorded infrastructure, information, memories, and oral histories. By mapping local flax cultivation and processing, the project will connect people, place, and heritage, and use this shared knowledge to explore new opportunities for re-establishing flax as a sustainable material.

As part of the Flax Forward Project, Wessex Community Assets is looking to recruit a part-time Heritage Research Facilitator and to award a number of short-term contracts. Project briefs are available for several commissions scheduled to run between May and November 2026.

If you are interested in applying for one or more of the commissions, please send an Expression of Interest along with your CV to david.dixon@wessexca.co.uk.

The closing date for Expressions of Interest is Tuesday 7 April 2026.

A summary of the project is available to inform Expressions of Interest:
Flax Forward: The story of a plant, a town and a landscape.