Longstanding practices, renewed relevance
Repair and reuse have long been essential strategies for living with scarcity, transforming constraints into opportunities through culturally embedded knowledge, accumulated over generations. In many parts of the world, they still are. As concerns over climate change, waste, and resource depletion grow, repair is experiencing a remarkable revival and is increasingly recognized as a cornerstone of the circular economy and of the global right-to-repair movement.
Living heritage
Heritage is what we care about and want to pass on to future generations. It is not only embodied in sites, monuments, and objects. It also lives in practices, knowledge, and skills passed on and reshaped over time, which we continue to adapt and transform as their meanings and uses change. This living heritage connects people and contributes to a sense of belonging. It can also provide practical resources for building more regenerative futures, helping us respond to environmental crises and adapt to changing climatic conditions.
What we do
PATCH documents repair, reuse and upcycling practices, connects initiatives across countries and sectors, and highlights the diverse ways in which people care for, adapt, transform, and give new life to things.
What we bring together
PATCH includes both practices that have emerged or been revitalized in response to contemporary environmental challenges and longstanding traditions that have continued uninterrupted in many societies.
How we work together
Designed as a research tool and a shared learning environment, the platform brings together students, researchers, practitioners, communities, and anyone who wishes to contribute by documenting and sharing repair, reuse, and upcycling practices. Contributions can be submitted directly through the platform, allowing the map and its knowledge base to grow through the experiences and perspectives of those who take part.
Building a community
Through collaborative documentation and the exchange of experiences, PATCH aims to build a community around repair, reuse, and upcycling and to deepen our collective understanding of these practices as living heritage, forms of social innovation, and pathways toward regenerative futures.
Join us
Whether you are here to discover initiatives, share a practice or experience, connect with others, or learn from them, we invite you to become part of this growing community.
Who we are
This website is designed and managed by the UNESCO Chair on Intangible Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development. It grew out of coursework developed with students in the Heritage for Sustainable Development course in the Master of Science in Innovation, Human Development and Sustainability at the University of Geneva.
The website was developed by Mana Majidi, MSc student in Innovation, Human Development and Sustainability at the University of Geneva, in the framework of the Heritage for Sustainable Development course.