What does size have to do with value?
Big or small, informal or corporate, cultural production ought to add value to the lives of those involved in making things, at least as much as it does to those who see, hear or witness the products.
It is easy to be distracted by the formality of being associated with well known brands. There are moments for building CVs and others for being at the top of one’s game, regardless of the context in which the game is presented.
Impressive and grand spaces can provide opportunities to be seen and heard, but smaller operations provide opportunities for groundbreaking ideas to be explored and road tested.
A few individuals are selected to be faces of the big organisations. Others function more effectively in small scale settings. Hype machines usually make an imposing impact in the short term, but over long periods of time, other facts emerge.
In the heydays of art movies, some of us were attracted to the quirkiness and personal nature of storytelling on big screens. Hollywood might have attracted much larger audiences with its successful releases, but the relative value of big when compared to small could only be ascertained in the long term.
