The art of the tinkerer: why making do is a creative superpower

Music · Published 18 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Forget rigid blueprints and master plans. From the punk movement's use of safety pins to the mechanics of evolutionary biology, the concept of bricolage celebrates the power of improvisation. It is the creative process of using whatever materials are immediately available to solve unexpected problems through resourceful tinkering and reuse.

Derived from the French verb 'bricoler', meaning to tinker, bricolage describes the process of creating works from a diverse range of available materials. While often associated with DIY projects, the concept carries profound weight in anthropology and philosophy. In his 1962 work, The Savage Mind, Claude Lévi-<0xC2>uss introduced the 'bricoleur'—a creator who recombines existing elements to solve new problems—as a contrast to the 'engineer', who operates strictly from theoretical, pre-established plans.

This 'tinkering' approach extends far beyond art. In biology, François Jacob applied the concept to evolution, describing it as 'evolutionary tinkering.' In psychology, researchers Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks, Matthew J. Karlesky, and Fiona Lee describe 'psychological bricolage' as a cognitive process where individuals develop novel solutions by retrieving and recombining previously unrelated knowledge. Similarly, in subcultures like punk, bricolage involves acquiring objects from the dominant culture and imbuing them with subversive new meanings, such as the transformation of the safety pin into a decorative ornament.

However, the concept is not without debate. While Lévi-Strauss saw bricolage as a characteristic of mythical thought, anthropologist Tim Ingold challenged this in 2007. Ingoing argues that bricolage mistakenly views creativity as the mere rearrangement of stable, fixed elements. He proposes instead a more fluid view of creativity grounded in 'becoming' and the ongoing transformation of elements. Whether viewed as a way to learn through trial and error, as Seymour Papert suggested, or as a method for building resilient information systems, bricolage remains a vital framework for understanding how we navigate a complex, changing world.

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