Providence | The Creative Capital
Celebrating innovation and creativity in Providence.
The Biggest Little (TBL)
Marjory Garrison and her partner, Brendan Ravenhill, love Providence so much that shortly after they moved here in 2007 from Brooklyn, they and some friends started a guerrilla "Move to Providence" recruitment campaign to entice friends in other cities to come here too.
They created a website, thebiggestlittle.org, and produced a poster that riffs on the old blue and white "evacuation route" signs ubiquitous in American cities: "Evacuation Route: Move to Providence: thebiggestlittle.org". Garrison and friends take posters with them when they visit other cities, and their website encourages visitors to download and make copies of the poster and put them up where they live and travel. Posters have been spotted in Atlanta, Chicago, Seattle, Boston, and New York.
This campaign is purposefully opaque – Garrison says she wants people to be caught off guard by the posters. She uses this quirky communication process to mirror the character of Providence as she has experienced it.
TBL's website curates the Providence experience of artists and other creative young residents through an archive of photographs they have submitted depicting works of art, creations, buildings, events and happenings – "a collective sense of curious things" as Garrison puts it.
TBL recently hosted a "Win a trip to Providence" contest on its website, inviting people to submit photographs of something made, built, found, or witnessed. The winners received prizes furnished by local establishments and were brought to Providence's Woolly Fair, an annual art carnival held at Monohasset Mill that showcases fantastic and fun inventions and creations.
"In Brooklyn there's a lot of personal ambition, but in Providence there's a lot of community ambition," says Garrison. "We are very lucky to have that organically here. There are so many creative people for whom collaboration is second nature, and we're excited to be a part of that. You want to make it work here, to contribute. Providence is not a place to experience passively."
