A friend just sent a link to a project that shares some of SiB's preoccupations and sympathies--artist Alice Angus has been commissioned by Mid Pennine Arts to explore the issues and history surrounding independent shopkeepers and retail in Lancaster. She talks about the project and shows some of the work she's developing out of it on her blog, As it Comes.
Photograph: Alice Angus
I'm interested in why you have called this project 'Small is Beautiful?'. Although the phrase is now in common parlance it was first used as the title of a book by the economist EF Schumacher. The book's subtitle is 'Economics as if people mattered' which gives one more of an idea of the content!
ReplyDeleteDid you have this in mind?
2011 will mark 100 years since Schumacher was born. For more information about him and his ideas see www.ef-schumacher.org
Thanks for your comment. Yes, Schumacher's book is a touchstone for the project, especially the emphasis on human-scale economies and other-than-economic ways of valuing people and things. Our addition of the '?' nudges our project into a critical engagement with these ideas, and also asks whether there is an aesthetic register to our appreciation of things small (and beautiful).
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