Nieuwe Instituut x HumDrumPress – The Tool Shed (ongoing)

HumDrumPress and the Nieuwe Instituut present a new series of Research Nights in the lead up to their collaborative publication: Tool Shed. The evenings will feature a presentation, discussion and workshop, inviting early collaborators, cultural workers and practitioners to experiment with the ideas behind Tool Shed and collaborative problem-solving in the cultural sector.

The evening will explore the Tool Shed concepts which emerged from the Nieuwe Instituut’s Collecting Otherwise project. The Tool Shed hinges on three main principles: neighbourly borrowing, maintaining and shedding. Research practices are are ‘borrowed’ and developed as problem-solving tools, carefully ‘maintained’ for future use, and finally ‘shed’, or passed on to others who could benefit from them. These tools might be protocols, hardware, manuals, recipes or scores.

Over the past four years and together with colleagues and external collaborators, the research team at the Nieuwe Instituut has implemented various versions of the Tool Shed. This has gradually crystalised into a world-building methodology.