Beyond traditions The adoption of circularity in French crafts

This study aims at exploring the adoption of circular practices in craft in the French context. In times where circularity is increasingly promoted by the French state and the craft sector faces many challenges to source materials and innovate, one may expect the rise of circular practices in craft to warrant special attention due to their environmental and innovative values. Yet these innovative and sustainable practices remain unheralded within an environment favoring the preservation of traditional craft models. That is why, this study takes the perspective of French creative crafts makers and investigate their experiences when adopting circularity. Through thirteen qualitative semi-structured interviews, this study especially aims at understanding (1) their circular practices and the challenges they face around skills, material, and techniques (2) their intrinsic motivations to adopt circularity, and (3) their experiences in terms of societal acknowledgement and support. The results show that creative crafts makers’ flexible, exploratory, and innovative approaches challenge conservative views on crafts, principally focused on preserving traditional know-how and skills. They ingeniously experiment with new skills and methods to create quality products from wastes and second-hand materials, recalling upcycling activities. Driven by their ecological and ethical values, they desire to foster more sustainable production and consumption. If these new practices seem to respond positively to traditional crafts challenges such as the lack of raw materials and innovative production models, new challenges are nevertheless arising. The issues mainly revolve around uneasy partnerships with landfills and second-hand managers, storing opportune second-hand and waste products, and time consumed to adapt to alternative and imperfect materials. Moreover, their innovative and sustainable practices seem to face a significant lack of support and legitimization from local governments, governmental organizations, and customers, mainly considering the artisanal and aesthetic value of their crafts. This denotes a larger societal problem around the openness towards ecological and out of the box practices, echoing the institutional preoccupation to protect traditions. Consequently, this study contributed to gain more in-depth knowledge on alternative types of crafts practices in France, beyond the traditional focus found in French institutions and academia, it also offers alternative solutions to protect the fragile existence of crafts through innovation rather preservation, so that craft can ultimately sustain itself. Lastly, this overview on current circular crafts practices and experiences regarding societal support and acknowledgement may help local stakeholders identify and tackle related challenges.