A new Slop University brochure invites the neighbourhood to sort a kitchen cupboard of plastic tubs and lids into five kinds, and describes the One-Lid-One-Tub Rule now kept in the University's tea rooms.
A School of Continuous Improvement brochure sorts the household plastic-container cupboard into five kinds, and the University sets one lid for every tub in its own tea rooms
The cupboard beside the oven has waited a long time for a vocabulary, and the School of Continuous Improvement has published one. A brochure released today invites the University’s neighbours to sort what they find there into five kinds: Matched, Lidless, Tubless, Cousin and Away.
The School has learned that it keeps its own cupboard much as everyone else does, and we find that encouraging.
— Dr Mirela Hanke, Postdoctoral Fellow and Deputy Convenor, Living Dashboard
The brochure, written with Dr Marit Osayande and Dr Joost Nwosu, walks a reader along the shelf, naming each tub and lid by what it is to the thing beside it, and then turns to the University’s own tea rooms. From the next review cycle, every University cupboard will post its count of the five kinds on its door and report it to the Living Dashboard. University events will be served from Matched tubs only, and a tub still Away at review will be sent a written notice of return.
Dr Nwosu described the notice as “a kindness with a deadline”, adding that the community’s good intentions travel well and would be welcome home. Students in the Capability Sprints and the Master of Applied Measurement are invited to sort a cupboard of their own as part of their work.
The release reflects the University’s wider interest in how a shared space keeps its things, and in the neighbourhood that fills it. The brochure sets the work beside six of the University’s published studies of ordinary arrangements.
The full brochure is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.5vb2xl.