What is an Educational Toolkit?

Educational Toolkits are discrete packages of learning materials and/or instructions that enable learners to follow a ‘course’ of learning.

Toolkits – generally speaking – will provided a learner with almost* everything they need to learn.

*Caveat – just as a TV chef might assume that you have ‘staples’ such as salt in your kitchen, the toolkit creator might assume that you have certain ‘household essentials’ to hand. However, we should try to avoid making any assumptions about learners in terms of what they may or may not have – thus, a toolkit really must be comprehensive.

Following Make Gold, we can break the components of a Toolkit down as follows:

1. Materials (a finite set of adaptable resources)
2. Instructions (a set of guidelines on how to ‘use’ the materials)

Insofar as a toolkit is a set of instructions, it suggests a “goal” – that is something that will be learned, or accomplished. In this sense, ‘toolkit’ has come to be associated with everything from government-led media campaigns and to climate change protest strategies.

See: https://theprint.in/theprint-essential/what-is-toolkit-document-key-to-tech-era-protests-that-has-landed-disha-nikita-in-trouble/605926/

Examples of Educational Toolkits

Here are few examples of Educational Toolkits – (not neccessarily artists‘ toolkits):

What is an Artists’ Toolkit?

An Artists’ Toolkit often resonates with the artist’s own practice but may remain discreet from it. This is to say that an Artists’ Toolkit could be concieved a work of art in its own right, or, simply,  be a package of learning materials* and/or instructions from which an art work might be created by a ‘learner’.

As such, it can help to think of Artists’ Toolkits as ‘scores’. Just as music may be scored for a musician to play, so might an artistic practice be scored as a Toolkit for learners to play.

The Artists’ Toolkits commissioned by Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop might be thought of in this way.

Artists’ Toolkit 2021: Images and Video

Click on this image to see a slideshow of the Artists’ Toolkit ⬆

This workshop – led by the artists Debjani Banerjee and Naomi Garriock – took place on Thursday 7th October September 2021 in the Courtyard Studio space of Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop | 21 Hawthornvale, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Edinburgh, GB EH6 4JT

Debi Banerjee is Curator for Learning at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop.

Here is a workshop that Naomi Garriock previously ran for the CAT programme which also takes the form of a Toolkit:

Mechanisms | Basic Mountain