Research Night: Tool Shed Open Book Session #1Research Night: Tool Shed Open Book Session #1

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 problem-solving methodology.

• 19:00-19:15: Welcome and introduction by HumDrumPress and the Nieuwe Instituut
• 19:15-19:25: Short presentation on core Tool Shed practices by the Nieuwe Instituut
• 19:25-19:50: Discussion: What other practices are related to the core Tool Shed concepts?
• 19:50-20:50: Hands-on workshop: Borrowing, Maintaining, Shedding
• 21:00: End of programme

Tool Shed is a new collaborative publication by the Nieuwe Instituut and HumDrumPress which aims to provide an overview of tool-shed ideas for cultural workers and institutions and independent collectives. It explores how contemporary problem- solving in the cultural sector can be approached across disciplines, in a collaborative and critical manner, within and between organisations of various sizes. It builds upon the Tool Shed concept as developed by Collecting Otherwise.

HumDrumPress is a publishing project that experiments with publishing as a commons. Based in Rotterdam and Berlin, HumDrumPress produces publications focused on collaboration, hosts public gatherings and maintains a commons-based publishing model as part of an expanded, experimental publishing practice.