Nieuwe Instituut’s research team proposes Tool Sheds as the theme for this year’s Call for Fellows. This iteration focuses on researching and applying tools, instruments, formats and methods that would help to foster a society that supports all life. Researchers “inhabit” the space of the “Tool Sheds” to test and share tools and applied methodologies, metaphorical or otherwise. 

Using Tool Sheds as a point of departure, this year’s Call for Fellows invites applicants to conceptualise, design and test applied research tools, instruments, methods, formats and processes for generative world-building using material, theoretical, political, time-based or place-based sets of practices. 

By calling for different forms of research, we invite applicants to embrace embodied forms of knowing, learning and investigating, and to think more deeply about the relationship between theory and practice. Nieuwe Instituut and its Research collective are currently engaged in imagining how museums and cultural institutions could function as ‘testing grounds’: equitable sites for action-based forms of research with the aim of enacting a society that supports all life, while at the same time investigating how to approach and situate ‘research as testing’ within the role of a cultural institution.  

The Tool Shed is one of the Research team’s concepts for public interfacing, through which research can engage and interact with various publics. We offer our own tools, while also leaving the metaphorical doors of the Tool Shed open for others outside the Nieuwe Instituut to contribute and share their own. 

The Tool Shed’s aim is to act as a node through which projects and collaborations between various publics and the Research team can be facilitated and developed at the threshold of the institution – by drawing on and contributing to already existing tools and methodologies, or by proposing others.

The Tool Shed aims to hold fluid, flexible, and multi-disciplinary research tools and methodologies for material, theoretical, political, time-based or place-based sets of practices. It also facilitates their accessibility through acts of neighbourly borrowing – between researchers, disciplines and ambitions, and between the Nieuwe Instituut and various publics. A Tool Shed is not necessarily a neat and sufficient collection of instruments, perfectly suited to their well-defined tasks; rather, it is a place to rummage around, to find unsought alternatives, to learn and mix skills.   

This open call invites applicants to contribute to the Research team’s Tool Sheds as sites for knowledge sharing, or to propose possible connections with the applicant’s own action-based and applied research Tool Sheds, networks and practices.   

About the Research Fellowships

Applicants are encouraged to submit a proposal that addresses their current investigations, explorations, or unfinished thoughts through the lens of architecture, design and digital culture. Proposals should clearly state their focus and aims, and also the socio-economic, nature-cultural and political context in which they are based. They may incorporate a larger system of reference, schools of critical thought and transdisciplinary practices, and non-academic references, as well as different forms of engagement and co-creation.  

There is no age limit for applicants. Individuals and collectives from all places of residence are invited to apply. Neither a curriculum vitae nor letters of recommendation are requested. The fellowships are open to all degree levels in all the disciplines of design, architecture and digital culture – broadly understood.  

Nieuwe Instituut publicly advocates for research and design practices that exceed the notion of individual authorship and that include multiple perspectives, activate multiple channels for the distribution of research outcomes, and construct a network of collaborators and other institutional contacts, both within the Netherlands and abroad. With this call, Nieuwe Instituut continues to support collaborative practices in design, architecture and digital culture.  

All applications will be reviewed based on their engagement with the proposed topic and contemporary challenges, the depth of investigation, and connection to the Nieuwe Instituut’s mission. Preference will be given to proposals that demonstrate critical and forward thinking, specificity, situatedness and a distinctive research theme and methodology. 

Submission requirements and deadline

Applications may be submitted from 19 June 2023 to 10 September 2023. The final deadline is on 10 September at 23:59 CEST.  Send your application to: callforfellows@nieuweinstituut.nl.  

Your application should include (in a single PDF): 

• Contact information (full name, country of residence, email address, telephone number).

• A self-introduction and an introduction of the research project, connecting it to the theme of Tool Sheds, in a link to a video file (maximum 3 minutes), or written formats if the applicant is not comfortable with or unable to use video.  

• A proposed research timeline and working methodology (maximum 300 words).