Tools for Action functions as an artist group and platform with a varying group of collaborators per project. Since 2019, Tools for Action is supported by the Tools for Action Foundation. 

Katherine Ball

Katherine Ball

Katherine Ball is a habitat for fungi and bacteria located on planet Earth. Their art practice explores the relationship between humans and the environment, as well as questions of social justice, through diverse media and practices, including water filtration systems, mushrooms, illustration, writing, film, social practice, dance, acrobatics and inflatable sculpture. She is the author of 'The Water Runs Through Us: Experimental Water Systems and Practices' at Floating University Berlin (Adocs, 2025) and 'Not Broken Yet: Oral Histories of Life in the Mojave Desert' (High Desert Test Sites, 2014). Within Tools for Action, Katherine has realised several projects, including the Carbon Bubble, the Carbon Bomb with Veterans for Peace, and the Mop with Damayan Migrant Workers. These projects formed part of the People’s Climate March, Flood Wall Street and other related actions. (New York, 2014) Katherine also helped shape the Red Line Barricade during the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21) in Paris, the Mirror Barricade (Dortmund, 2016), CPH-Alt (Copenhagen, 2016) and Now Is the Time of Monsters at Wiener Festwochen (Vienna, 2017).

Cami Martenot

Cami Martenot

Cami Martenot is a woodworker working with architects, artists and art institutions. He also teaches woodworking through workshops that encourage shared learning and collective making. Alongside his craft, he is interested in collective practices and the intersections between craftsmanship, contemporary art, social sculpture and activism. Collaboration and transdisciplinary approaches are central to his practice, which moves between woodworking, artistic research and collective projects. With Tools for Action, he took part in the Mirror Barricade project in Dortmund in 2016 and contributed to the Now is the Time of Monsters project in Vienna, 2017.

Maru van Donselaar

Maru van Donselaar

Maru does community organising with Tarwekracht in Rotterdam Zuid, where a lot of their work is getting neighbours, institutions and entrepreneurs to roll up their sleeves and do things together. Alongside that they are working on several projects that bring strangers together on a bigger scale, to get people out of their bubbles and give them a moment of sonder. Maru was previously Education Officer at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and is currently studying psychology. Maru shaped the projects Now Is The Time Of Monsters, 2017 at the Wiener Festwochen and CPH-Alt in Copenhagen.

nat skoczylas

nat skoczylas

nat skoczylas is a gender/queer artist, anarchist, writer and activist, living between Berlin and Massia(ru), Estonia. They run femAle, a queer feminist, anarchist brewing project since 2020 and hold collective cooking experiences for artistic and activist gatherings. nat’s practice concerns food and fermentation as social spaces of interspecies interaction, transformation and metaphor. In their collective collaborative practice using word, performance and facilitation, they explore the utopian, the unknown, the mystical, the radical and the revolutionary from a trans/queer/feminist lens. They’re deeply invested in mutual aid, transformative justice, abolitionism and decolonial, anticapitalist practices. nat developed and produced the Delegation of Slippery Affairs performance for the inauguration of the new Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2024.

Christy Westhovens

Christy Westhovens

Christy Westhovens is a visual artist, hacker, researcher and builder of machines. She designs tools to measure and translate natural processes into intuitive somatic experiences. In addition she explores collective machine building as a form of pedagogy, where playing, exploring, shaping, and adapting personal experiences in relation to the environment are central. The practice aims to foster awareness and control over the technologies that continually surround us. Christy worked on several Tools of the Tools for Action sensoriums, including dream machines and facillitated the workhop Rainbow Warriors at BAK Basis in Utrecht.

Carmen Branco van Gelder

Carmen Branco van Gelder

Carmen Branco van Gelder is a visual and conceptual artist who recently graduated in Fine Arts at the Willem de Kooning Academy. Carmen uses different tools and crafts in search of conveying the right visual translation to a theme or feeling. She defines her work as divergent and transformative. Carmen worked with Tools for Action at Berry (Dreammachine 03).

Tilly Gifford

Tilly Gifford

Tilly Gifford lives in Scotland and arrives to harness creativity for social change. Tilly aims to use playfulness in order to un-constrain the collective imagination and defy the rigid structures. Tilly realised with Tools for Action the Pink Chappal (India 2012), together with the KRRS farmers movement The BT Brinjal (India, 2013) and the Mirror Barricade (Germany, 2016).

Bambí Benkö

Bambí Benkö

Bambí Benkö is a queer Dutch-Hungarian visual artist, activist and educator. They founded Tools for Action in 2012 and have contributed to nearly all of the collective’s projects, including Mirror Barricade, Signals and RAEV REHEARSAL. Their practice integrates political action in the street, art-activist pedagogy and dreamwork, instigating a communal practice of empowerment, healing and repair in the ruins of the Complicated Now. With arts collective Dream Wide Awake, they hold dreaming assemblies in a church, using live music and immersive environments to guide participants from wakefulness into sleep. Reviving the ancient art of dreaming together, their work explores collective dreaming as a space for intimate connection and political imagination, incubating other possible worlds.

Jakub Simcik

Jakub Simcik

Jakub Simcik is a video artist, curator and educator. He has exhibited internationally and his work is part of the collections of Ivo Wessel and the Free State of Saxony. He received his formal training at the Glasgow School of Art (2008-2009) and the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig (2009-2015). Jakub shaped the project El Martillo (2010, Eclectic Electric Collective, predecessor Tools for Action) and Red Lines Barricade at the COP 19 in Paris, 2015.

Z. Blace (Željko Blaće)

Z. Blace (Željko Blaće)

Željko Blaće (born 1976 in Čapljina, former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) works across contemporary art and culture, digital technologies and media, community sports, and activism, cross-pollinating queer, commoning, and other participatory practices. He co-founded MaMa, the Multimedia Institute in Zagreb, and has researched generative media, software art, streaming aesthetics, operating systems, and network tools and technologies. He has also explored the tensions between normativity and queer expression in sports and leisure through QueerSports, initiating ccSPORT as a translocal platform for critical and creative practice. More recently, his work has focused on participation, methodology, and the gaps between content and interfaces in open knowledge, data, and publishing ecosystems, including Wikimedia and the Fediverse. Željko realised PopUP RAINBOW, a Queer Sports and Tools for Action intervention at a national swimming competition in Croatia in 2014.

Josse Vessies

Josse Vessies

Josse is a choreographer, digital artist, teacher and costume maker, working at the intersection of physical performance, embodiment practices, and media art. Their practice combines live performance with ethereal post-internet aesthetics, often incorporating interaction design, generative art, photogrammetry and web development. In 2023, Josse founded performance platform Nobody’s Movement, where artists and communities can collaborate to explore their interrelated embodied experiences. They are dedicated to creating awareness of how information exists in and through bodies. And to keep exploring the poetic and narrative potential of hybrid performance, blending documentary theatre, with evocative multisensory designs.

Sarah Kerbosch

Sarah Kerbosch

Sarah Kerbosch is a Dutch multidisciplinary artist and designer, with a background in fashion design and psychology. She focuses on the effect of space, colour and tactility on well-being, discovering how space influences the body and vice versa. She uses textiles in combination with other materials to create worlds in which her fantastical creatures live. She collaborates with Tools for Action on large scale sewing works such as the reproduction of the inflatable Hammer (2021), the inflatable Bomb (in collaboration with Dani Ploeger).

Katherine Ball

Katherine Ball

Katherine Ball is a habitat for fungi and bacteria located on planet Earth. Their art practice explores the relationship between humans and the environment, as well as questions of social justice, through diverse media and practices, including water filtration systems, mushrooms, illustration, writing, film, social practice, dance, acrobatics and inflatable sculpture. She is the author of 'The Water Runs Through Us: Experimental Water Systems and Practices' at Floating University Berlin (Adocs, 2025) and 'Not Broken Yet: Oral Histories of Life in the Mojave Desert' (High Desert Test Sites, 2014). Within Tools for Action, Katherine has realised several projects, including the Carbon Bubble, the Carbon Bomb with Veterans for Peace, and the Mop with Damayan Migrant Workers. These projects formed part of the People’s Climate March, Flood Wall Street and other related actions. (New York, 2014) Katherine also helped shape the Red Line Barricade during the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21) in Paris, the Mirror Barricade (Dortmund, 2016), CPH-Alt (Copenhagen, 2016) and Now Is the Time of Monsters at Wiener Festwochen (Vienna, 2017).

Tilly Gifford

Tilly Gifford

Tilly Gifford lives in Scotland and arrives to harness creativity for social change. Tilly aims to use playfulness in order to un-constrain the collective imagination and defy the rigid structures. Tilly realised with Tools for Action the Pink Chappal (India 2012), together with the KRRS farmers movement The BT Brinjal (India, 2013) and the Mirror Barricade (Germany, 2016).

Cami Martenot

Cami Martenot

Cami Martenot is a woodworker working with architects, artists and art institutions. He also teaches woodworking through workshops that encourage shared learning and collective making. Alongside his craft, he is interested in collective practices and the intersections between craftsmanship, contemporary art, social sculpture and activism. Collaboration and transdisciplinary approaches are central to his practice, which moves between woodworking, artistic research and collective projects. With Tools for Action, he took part in the Mirror Barricade project in Dortmund in 2016 and contributed to the Now is the Time of Monsters project in Vienna, 2017.

Bambí Benkö

Bambí Benkö

Bambí Benkö is a queer Dutch-Hungarian visual artist, activist and educator. They founded Tools for Action in 2012 and have contributed to nearly all of the collective’s projects, including Mirror Barricade, Signals and RAEV REHEARSAL. Their practice integrates political action in the street, art-activist pedagogy and dreamwork, instigating a communal practice of empowerment, healing and repair in the ruins of the Complicated Now. With arts collective Dream Wide Awake, they hold dreaming assemblies in a church, using live music and immersive environments to guide participants from wakefulness into sleep. Reviving the ancient art of dreaming together, their work explores collective dreaming as a space for intimate connection and political imagination, incubating other possible worlds.

Maru van Donselaar

Maru van Donselaar

Maru does community organising with Tarwekracht in Rotterdam Zuid, where a lot of their work is getting neighbours, institutions and entrepreneurs to roll up their sleeves and do things together. Alongside that they are working on several projects that bring strangers together on a bigger scale, to get people out of their bubbles and give them a moment of sonder. Maru was previously Education Officer at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and is currently studying psychology. Maru shaped the projects Now Is The Time Of Monsters, 2017 at the Wiener Festwochen and CPH-Alt in Copenhagen.

Jakub Simcik

Jakub Simcik

Jakub Simcik is a video artist, curator and educator. He has exhibited internationally and his work is part of the collections of Ivo Wessel and the Free State of Saxony. He received his formal training at the Glasgow School of Art (2008-2009) and the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig (2009-2015). Jakub shaped the project El Martillo (2010, Eclectic Electric Collective, predecessor Tools for Action) and Red Lines Barricade at the COP 19 in Paris, 2015.

nat skoczylas

nat skoczylas

nat skoczylas is a gender/queer artist, anarchist, writer and activist, living between Berlin and Massia(ru), Estonia. They run femAle, a queer feminist, anarchist brewing project since 2020 and hold collective cooking experiences for artistic and activist gatherings. nat’s practice concerns food and fermentation as social spaces of interspecies interaction, transformation and metaphor. In their collective collaborative practice using word, performance and facilitation, they explore the utopian, the unknown, the mystical, the radical and the revolutionary from a trans/queer/feminist lens. They’re deeply invested in mutual aid, transformative justice, abolitionism and decolonial, anticapitalist practices. nat developed and produced the Delegation of Slippery Affairs performance for the inauguration of the new Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2024.

Z. Blace (Željko Blaće)

Z. Blace (Željko Blaće)

Željko Blaće (born 1976 in Čapljina, former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) works across contemporary art and culture, digital technologies and media, community sports, and activism, cross-pollinating queer, commoning, and other participatory practices. He co-founded MaMa, the Multimedia Institute in Zagreb, and has researched generative media, software art, streaming aesthetics, operating systems, and network tools and technologies. He has also explored the tensions between normativity and queer expression in sports and leisure through QueerSports, initiating ccSPORT as a translocal platform for critical and creative practice. More recently, his work has focused on participation, methodology, and the gaps between content and interfaces in open knowledge, data, and publishing ecosystems, including Wikimedia and the Fediverse. Željko realised PopUP RAINBOW, a Queer Sports and Tools for Action intervention at a national swimming competition in Croatia in 2014.

Christy Westhovens

Christy Westhovens

Christy Westhovens is a visual artist, hacker, researcher and builder of machines. She designs tools to measure and translate natural processes into intuitive somatic experiences. In addition she explores collective machine building as a form of pedagogy, where playing, exploring, shaping, and adapting personal experiences in relation to the environment are central. The practice aims to foster awareness and control over the technologies that continually surround us. Christy worked on several Tools of the Tools for Action sensoriums, including dream machines and facillitated the workhop Rainbow Warriors at BAK Basis in Utrecht.

Josse Vessies

Josse Vessies

Josse is a choreographer, digital artist, teacher and costume maker, working at the intersection of physical performance, embodiment practices, and media art. Their practice combines live performance with ethereal post-internet aesthetics, often incorporating interaction design, generative art, photogrammetry and web development. In 2023, Josse founded performance platform Nobody’s Movement, where artists and communities can collaborate to explore their interrelated embodied experiences. They are dedicated to creating awareness of how information exists in and through bodies. And to keep exploring the poetic and narrative potential of hybrid performance, blending documentary theatre, with evocative multisensory designs.

Carmen Branco van Gelder

Carmen Branco van Gelder

Carmen Branco van Gelder is a visual and conceptual artist who recently graduated in Fine Arts at the Willem de Kooning Academy. Carmen uses different tools and crafts in search of conveying the right visual translation to a theme or feeling. She defines her work as divergent and transformative. Carmen worked with Tools for Action at Berry (Dreammachine 03).

Sarah Kerbosch

Sarah Kerbosch

Sarah Kerbosch is a Dutch multidisciplinary artist and designer, with a background in fashion design and psychology. She focuses on the effect of space, colour and tactility on well-being, discovering how space influences the body and vice versa. She uses textiles in combination with other materials to create worlds in which her fantastical creatures live. She collaborates with Tools for Action on large scale sewing works such as the reproduction of the inflatable Hammer (2021), the inflatable Bomb (in collaboration with Dani Ploeger).