Creative Urban Methods: Toolkitting as Method

Iris van der Tuin

In 2019 we launched the research initiative CRUM. Short for Creative Urban Methods, CRUM aims to develop a transdisciplinary toolkit of interdisciplinary methods for mapping and analyzing (issues around) infrastructures within public space to contribute to the development of (more) sustainable urban infrastructures. The toolkit is intended to be implemented in academic research and teaching contexts, as well as in contexts of participatory citymaking practices. CRUM wants to bring together ongoing urban and creative research in the social and geo sciences, and the humanities at Utrecht University. We aim to organize a productive exchange around this shared interest in (and perceived need for) a robust methodology for collaborative work. In a series of workshops already existing creative methods developed in various contexts within Utrecht University and beyond will be selected, fine-tuned and adapted for implementation in the context of research into (futures for) sustainable urban infrastructures. Outcomes of these workshops provide input for a book proposal for the toolkit and a didactic plan for its implementation in educational contexts at Utrecht University. 

Toolkitting is popular and particularly so in relation to the 21^st century skill of creative thinking. Academics use toolkits in order to structure and enhance multi- and interdisciplinary research collaboration. Such collaboration often has the goal of finding unconventional solutions to complex ongoing problems, a goal that only comes within reach when there is common ground amongst the participating scholars. When conceptual, epistemic and empirical common ground appears to be missing at first glance, a structured way of working will provide just enough commonality for a research project to successfully take off. Toolkits are also used in the wider field of arts and culture. Arts and culture professionals, too, deal with an abundance of unstructured or even contradictory knowledge, information and exchange in today’s ‘algorithmic condition’ (Colman et al. 2018). Toolkits are helpful in that they pre-determine ways of working through the sheer abundance of data. Ultimately, they lead users to making an informed selection of relevant textual or visual material for a particular context or project. Toolkits are also employed as a way of establishing successful co-operation of academics, on the one hand, and arts and culture professionals, on the other. Step-by-step methods are helpful in such transdisciplinary teamwork, because these teams may also lack conceptual, epistemic and empirical common ground. Toolkits help collaborating academics, experts and makers to take the first step toward constructing a shared language by committing themselves as a group to following a number of consecutive modules. These modules contain individual and collective activities ranging from private ‘braindumps’ to group reflection. The wide and differing use that is being made of toolkits today has led to initiatives bringing several toolkits together so that potential users can easily navigate their way through the toolkitting landscape and select the right tookit for situated use given the parameters in play (Pohl and Wuelser 2019; see also td-net’s online toolbox). Both the popularity of toolkits and the popping-up of meta-toolkits raise questions about the very nature of toolkitting as a method.

Etymology and theory of toolkits

The noun ‘toolkit’ was coined in the early 20^th century and is, obviously, a combination of ‘tool’ and ‘kit’ (see the Online Etymology Dictionary). ‘Tool’ can be both noun and verb, whereby tools are instruments and ‘tooling’ refers to the implementation of some-thing for a specific aim and to managing that thing skillfully. Since the 1550s male genitalia have been slangishly referred to as ‘tools’. The latter provides for a gendered connotation of tools and tool-use. The noun ‘kit’ originally, that is, since the late 13^th century refers to a container. Gradually this ‘container’ became more specific in meaning and now a kit refers to a box or a bag made and used for transport of a collection of things or instruments. An example is the workman’s belt, again connoted masculine. It is in the goal-orientation of most toolkitting scenarios that the male gender can still be distilled, but there are also other ways of looking at toolkits and the processes they set in motion.

A quick scan of the literature on ‘toolkit theory’ available through the platform Google Scholar demonstrates that ‘toolkit’, generally speaking, is an unstable concept with varying interpretations and manifestations. Toolkit theories are, for starters, negatively valued as purely instrumentalist takes on human interaction, but they are also seen neutrally as engaging a pragmatic concept for employing “a repertoire or ‘toolkit’ of habits, skills and styles from which people construct ‘strategies of action’” (Swidler 1986: 273). Toolkit theories are also used explicitly as a way of understanding the modus operandi of the conceptual, epistemic and/or empirical bricoleur. Here, bricoleurs are opposed to those working with/in a single paradigm of knowing or making (Carstensen 2011). Instrumentalist, pragmatic and perhaps postmodern uses of toolkit theory can be connected by the idea of toolkits as ‘heuristics’: “they help us to generate ideas and arguments. [… They] are technologies to discover what is considered significant within a particular episteme (or epistemic context)” (Axelrod and Axelrod 2004: 115). Finally, a quick literature scan reveals a move of toolkit theory in the direction of the material turn in the humanities and social sciences, where it is argued that “cultural tools are not purely discursive, but [also] dependent on the material environment” (Ylä-Anttila 2017: 9). 

In sum, tools or collections of tools can be both unconsciously adopted socio-cultural repertoires or consciously activated procedures. A materialist toolkit theory recognizes and works with the constraints in, or of, a situation. Alternatively, toolkits themselves set constraints as rules of the game in order to work toward a conclusion or plan. Such rules are, e.g., a thematic area, a number of participants, a set of ordered steps to take, time limits and the use of certain materials and/or technologies and not others. In programmatic cases, the goal of toolkitting scenarios is to facilitate the doing of something collectively and to work toward a shared language, grounded conclusions and potentially also plans for engendering change. I would therefore argue that both tools and toolkits are ‘material-discursive generative nodes’ (cf. Haraway 1988: 595).

But what exactly is the very process tapped into or set in motion by the use of toolkits and by the practice of toolkitting? A toolkit used to activate a procedure provides an interface for the generation of new ideas – from concepts through conclusions to plans – by way of participation (cf. Phillips and Baurley 2014). Such a kit of tools for stimulating creativity is deployed in a particular situation and describes, that is, externalizes and formalizes a set of steps or, better, a series of consecutive modules. Let me unravel this short statement in the following three concluding paragraphs.

Toolkits as algorithmic devices

When a team decides to ‘toolkit’ in their project, the participants settle on thinking, working and/or making procedurally. They do so in the design phase of the project in which they adopt a procedure that was externalized and formalized by others before them or for which they themselves develop a procedure by reflecting on what they think they will need in order to overcome hurdles on the way. Whereas all procedures usually lead to something, and are therefore generative in the broadest sense, a toolkitting scenario is often intended to be generative of something new or unexpected. This is where the logics of proceeding algorithmically comes to the fore as the very core of the toolkitting method. Algorithmic logics exceed the deductive reasoning and learning path (which leads from broad conclusions to more specific observations) and the inductive reasoning and learning path (leading from specific observations to broader conclusions) by tapping into the abductive reasoning and learning path. ‘Abduction’ is a form of informed guessing about why an observation popped up in a process or about how a conclusion came into being (Darbellay et al. 2014). The popping-up or coming-into-being may happen serendipitously and may catch the participants engaged in the use of a toolkit by surprise. Toolkits assist their users in fostering creativity by taking serendipity and surprises seriously as springboards for the next step to take in the process of finding a creative solution to a complex problem.

Note on abduction

As interfaces for the collaborative generation of creativity or ideas, toolkits allow their users to act on the epistemological paradox that is key to abductive reasoning and learning. This paradox has been neatly formulated by a group of scholars of interdisciplinary research collaboration:

Making oneself cognitively available to confront the unexpected or accidental is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the production of new ideas, in the sense that the researcher must also demonstrate sagacity and be capable of analyzing and understanding the surprise effect so as to exploit it for truly creative purposes. […] it is the step that sets in motion an exploratory process that must then be exploited by reason. (Darbellay et al. 2014: 5)

Toolkits provide conditions for exploration, exploitation and reasoning. They create a stimulating setting and a shared mindset that invite participants in a given socio-techno-material environment to making themselves ‘cognitively available’ for serendipity and surprise by helping the participants actively manage and mobilize existing knowledge, insights and beliefs. It is only by managing and mobilizing pre-existing conceptual, epistemic and empirical content that collective findings can fall into place and common grounds can be formulated in the first place. This applies especially to serendipitous and surprising findings as these kinds of findings are quick to disappear when they don’t find fertile soil.

How to externalize and formalize, and how to establish trust in the process

A tricky question perhaps is how to build and sustain the modularized procedures that are captured in toolkits, and how to make sure they actually seduce users into following them. Here, another reference to Donna Haraway (1988) is helpful: a toolkit is a piece of ‘situated knowledge’ as it is built in one context and used in other, different and equally unique contexts. Remember that toolkits are primarily for travel. Ann Swidler’s 1986 toolkit theory of culture situates itself ‘in the middle’ and talks about toolkits as strategies or repertoires of action, skills, habits and orientations that can be moved in many directions. Some theorists use ‘situated cognition’ (Ivanov 2020) for their toolkit theory and link Swidler to the turn to practice that we also find in Haraway’s field of expertise: science and technology studies. In very practical terms, one could say that a toolkit is usually generated in a participatory design process that involves iterative prototyping. This is to say that the construction of toolkits happens in the practice of using them. Both their design and their use start from the bottom up which means that every new use that is made of the toolkit adds to its design. An important aspect of every toolkit is, therefore, that not only travel is facilitated but also change. Toolkits have the capacity of both fostering creativity and attracting creative minds. This implies that they perhaps manage to bridge conceptual, epistemic and/or empirical divides by taking differing preferences, roles, expectations and applications seriously in a conversational process.

Literature referenced

Axelrod, J. B. C. and R. B. Axelrod (2004) ‘Reading Frederick Douglass through Foucault’s Panoptic Lens: A Proposal for Teaching Close Reading’, Pacific Coast Philology, 39, pp. 112-127.

Carstensen, Martin B. (2011) ‘Paradigm Man vs. The Bricoleur: Bricolage as an Alternative Vision of Agency in Ideational Change’, European Political Science Review 3(1), pp. 147-167.

Colman, F., V. Bühlmann, A. O’Donnell & I. van der Tuin (2018), Ethics of Coding: A Report on the Algorithmic Condition [EoC]. H2020-EU.2.1.1. – INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP – Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies – Information and Communication Technologies. Brussels: European Commission.

Darbellay, F., Z. Moody, A. Sedooka & G. Steffen (2014), ‘Interdisciplinary Research Boosted by Serendipity’, Creativity Research Journal, 26(1), pp. 1-10.

Haraway, D. (1988), ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and The Privilege of Partial Perspective’, Feminist Studies, 14(3), pp. 575-599.

Ivanov, A. O. (2020), ‘Evaluative Practices in a Broadcasting Newsroom Archive: Culture, Context, and Understanding in Practice’, International Journal of Communication, 14. 

Phillips, R. & S. Baurley (2014), ‘Exploring Open Design for the Application of Citizen Science: A Toolkit Methodology’, 8^th Design Research Society Conference: Design’s Big Debates. Umea, Sweden, 16-19 June.

Pohl, C. & G. Wuelser (2019), ‘Methods for Coproduction of Knowledge Among Diverse Disciplines and Stakeholders’, pp. 115-121 in: K. Hall, A. Vogel & R. Croyle (eds.), Strategies for Team Science Success, Cham: Springer.

Swidler, A. (1986), ‘Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies’, American Sociological Review, 51(2), pp. 273-286.

Td-net’s toolbox: https://naturalsciences.ch/co-producing-knowledge-explained/methods/td-net_toolbox (accessed 19 February 2021; ‘Td-net’ stands for Network for Transdisciplinary Research and is hosted by the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences.)

‘Toolkit.’ Online Etymology Dictionary. https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=toolkit (accessed 19 February 2021)

Ylä-Anttila, T. (2017), The Populist Toolkit: Finnish Populism in Action 2007-2016, University of Helsinki PhD Dissertation.