TOOLSHED

TOOLSHED is a new residency and research initiative dedicated to exploring the tools we use to build, question, and transform cultural institutions today.

Located on the second floor of Kunstinstituut Melly, TOOLSHED is conceived as a dynamic experimental space for reflection, discussion, experimentation, and action. This initiative builds on our ongoing programs: Tools for Collective Learning, Tools for Demodernizing, and Tools for Conviviality and extends our commitment to institutional practices rooted in accessibility, criticality, and care.

At TOOLSHED, tooling is approached as both a practical and symbolic process. It is a space to engage with artistic, theoretical, conceptual, and material tools that shape how we institute. TOOLSHED invites artists, cultural practitioners, researchers, and collectives to reflect on and challenge conventional institutional frameworks, while exploring interdisciplinary practices that expand the potential of art spaces to engage meaningfully with their surroundings.

For its pilot edition, TOOLSHED launches with Listening at Pungwe, the collective duo comprising artist and historian Memory Biwa and music and sound researcher Robert Machiri. Listening at Pungwe works with historical and contemporary sound collections and archives to create spaces where people can hear, feel, and activate new knowledge systems that challenge dominant ways of interacting with the world. Their residency foregrounds listening as a mode of inquiry, resistance, and reimagination.

TOOLSHED is designed as an open, publicly accessible space within Kunstinstituut Melly. Visitors are invited to engage directly with the processes and research unfolding within TOOLSHED, witnessing and participating in new modes of collective learning, institutional questioning, and artistic experimentation.

As a residency initiative, TOOLSHED will host two collectives per year, each developing their project over a four-month period. The program also collaborates with Casa Chris, which offers residential studio apartments for TOOLSHED participants, supporting immersive research embedded within Rotterdam’s cultural landscape.