Regenerative Craft and Circular Practice: Material, Technological, and Socio-Cultural Dimensions of Sustainable Making

Dear Colleagues,

The increasingly challenging issues of climate change, resource depletion, waste accumulation, and social inequality require creative, interdisciplinary solutions. Craft practices, which are rooted in material knowledge, embodied skills, and community traditions, are now widely recognised as powerful agents of social and environmental transformation. This Special Issue explores the intersection and evolution of regenerative craft and circular practices across material, technological, and socio-cultural dimensions, offering new pathways towards more sustainable, resilient, and equitable modes of making and living.

When society fails to care for nature, the consequences are grave. The nineteenth-century thinker John Ruskin believed that understanding nature was inseparable from understanding ourselves—a belief he embodied by teaching drawing through the close observation of the natural world. Building on Ruskin’s legacy and Richard Sennett’s insights into collaboration and craftsmanship, we propose that fostering opportunities for long-form, reflective making and encouraging a sense of ecological citizenship can help bridge social, environmental, and economic divides.

While linear production models—based on extraction, consumption and disposal—still dominate, they are increasingly challenged by circular and regenerative approaches. These aim not only to reduce waste but to restore, replenish, and reimagine material flows. Within craft, such approaches open up new dialogues between traditional techniques and emerging technologies, between local knowledge and global networks, and between aesthetic values and ecological responsibility. 

This Special Issue invites contributions that advance our understanding of sustainable making through craft-based practices, with a focus on the following themes:  

• Material Innovation: Experimentation with renewable, biodegradable, upcycled, or reclaimed materials; exploration of how materials transform and circulate through their lifecycles; and the design of circular supply chains that reduce waste and extend material value within craft contexts.
• Technological Integration: The use of digital fabrication (e.g., 3D printing), smart materials, sensor-enhanced artefacts, modular systems, and adaptive design strategies to support circular craft practices.
• Socio-Cultural Dynamics: Community engagement and participatory design that sustain local knowledge and cultural heritage; transmisson of craft skills and values across generations; inclusive and equitable approaches to making; and alternative socio-economic models such as repair, reuse, sharing and cooperative production.
• Systems Thinking and Frameworks: Methodological advances, lifecycle and systems analysis, models of regenerative systems, socio-ecological frameworks, community-led innovation, and evaluation tools tailored to sustainable craft contexts.
• Case Studies and Interventions: Empirical or practice-based accounts of craft projects, workshops, maker communities, social enterprises, or educational initiatives that embody regenerative and circular principles. 

We particularly welcome interdisciplinary collaborations that bridge craft studies, design, materials science, sustainability studies, anthropology, and related fields. Submissions may include original research, empirically grounded case studies, methodological explorations, or critical reviews.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Kyungeun Sung
Dr. Robert Phillips
Prof. Dr. Marsha MacDowell
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Crafts is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.