Festival of Britain


The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition and fair that reached millions of visitors throughout the United Kingdom in the summer of 1951.
Labour Party cabinet member Herbert Morrison was the prime mover; in 1947 he started with the original plan to celebrate the centennial of the Great Exhibition of 1851. However, it was not to be another World Fair, for international themes were absent, as was the British Commonwealth. Instead, the 1951 festival focused entirely on Britain and its achievements; it was funded chiefly by the government, with a budget of £12 million. The Labour government was losing support and so the implicit goal of the festival was to give the people a feeling of successful recovery from the war's devastation, as well as promoting British science, technology, industrial design, architecture and the arts.
The Festival's centrepiece was in London on the South Bank of the Thames. There were events in Poplar, Battersea, South Kensington and Glasgow. Festival celebrations took place in Cardiff, Stratford-upon-Avon, Bath, Perth, Bournemouth, York, Aldeburgh, Inverness, Cheltenham, Oxford, Norwich, Canterbury and elsewhere, and there were touring exhibitions by land and sea.
The Festival became a "beacon for change" that proved immensely popular with thousands of elite visitors and millions of ordinary citizens. It helped reshape British arts, crafts, designs and sports for a generation. Journalist Harry Hopkins highlights the widespread impact of the "Festival style". They called it "Contemporary". It was:
Historian Kenneth O. Morgan says the Festival was a "triumphant success" during which people:

Conception and organisation

The first idea for an exhibition in 1951 came from the Royal Society of Arts in 1943, which considered that an international exhibition should be held to commemorate the centenary of the 1851 Great Exhibition. In 1945, the government appointed a committee under Lord Ramsden to consider how exhibitions and fairs could promote exports. When the committee reported a year later, it was decided not to continue with the idea of an international exhibition because of its cost at a time when reconstruction was a high priority. Herbert Morrison took charge for the Labour government and decided instead to hold a series of displays about the arts, architecture, science, technology and industrial design, under the title "Festival of Britain 1951". Morrison insisted there be no politics, explicit or implicit. As a result, Labour-sponsored programmes such as nationalisation, universal health care and working-class housing were excluded; instead, what was allowed was town planning, scientific progress, and all sorts of traditional and modern arts and crafts.
Much of London lay in ruins, and models of redevelopment were needed. The Festival was an attempt to give Britons a feeling of recovery and progress and to promote better-quality design in the rebuilding of British towns and cities. The Festival of Britain described itself as "one united act of national reassessment, and one corporate reaffirmation of faith in the nation's future." Gerald Barry, the Festival Director, described it as "a tonic to the nation".
A Festival Council to advise the government was set up under General Lord Ismay. Responsibility for organisation devolved upon the Lord President of the Council, Herbert Morrison, the deputy leader of the Labour Party, who had been London County Council leader. He appointed a Great Exhibition Centenary Committee, consisting of civil servants, who were to define the framework of the Festival and to liaise between government departments and the festival organisation. In March 1948, a Festival Headquarters was set up, which was to be the nucleus of the Festival of Britain Office, a government department with its own budget. Festival projects in Northern Ireland were undertaken by the government of Northern Ireland.
Associated with the Festival of Britain Office were the Arts Council of Great Britain, the Council of Industrial Design, the British Film Institute and the National Book League. In addition, a Council for Architecture and a Council for Science and Technology were specially created to advise the Festival Organisation and a Committee of Christian Churches was set up to advise on religion. Government grants were made to the Arts Council, the Council of Industrial Design, the British Film Institute and the National Museum of Wales for work undertaken as part of the Festival.
Gerald Barry had operational charge. A long-time editor with left-leaning, middle-brow views, he was energetic and optimistic, with an eye for what would be popular, and a knack on how to motivate others. Unlike Morrison, Barry was not seen as a Labour ideologue. Barry selected the next rank, giving preference to young architects and designers who had collaborated on exhibitions for the wartime Ministry of Information. They thought along the same lines socially and aesthetically, as middle-class intellectuals with progressive sympathies. Thanks to Barry, a collegial sentiment prevailed that minimised stress and delay.

Displays

The arts were displayed in a series of country-wide musical and dramatic performances. Achievements in architecture were presented in a new neighbourhood, the Lansbury Estate, planned, built and occupied in the Poplar district of London.
The Festival's centrepiece was the South Bank Exhibition, in the Waterloo area of London, which demonstrated the contribution made by British advances in science, technology and industrial design, displayed, in their practical and applied form, against a background representing the living, working world of the day.
There were other displays elsewhere, each intended to be complete in itself, yet each part of the one single conception. Festival Pleasure Gardens were set up in Battersea, about three miles up river from the South Bank. Heavy engineering was the subject of an Exhibition of Industrial Power in Glasgow. Certain aspects of science, which did not fall within the terms of reference of the South Bank Exhibition, were displayed in South Kensington. Linen technology and science in agriculture were exhibited in "Farm and Factory" in Belfast. A smaller exhibition of the South Bank story was put on in the Festival ship Campania, which toured the coast of Britain throughout the summer of 1951, and on land there was a travelling exhibition of industrial design.
London Transport ordered its first batch of 25 post-war RF single deck buses fitted with roof lights to provide a fleet of sight-seeing coaches for the festival. In addition it sent four new RT buses on a promotional tour of Europe, covering and eight countries.
The University of Brighton Design Archives have digitised many of the relating to the planning of the festival.

Principal events

England

Exhibitions
  • South Bank, London
  • Science, South Kensington
  • Architecture, Poplar
  • Books, South Kensington
  • 1851 Centenary Exhibition, South Kensington
  • Festival of British Films, London
Festival Pleasure Gardens, Battersea Park, London
London Season of the Arts
Arts Festivals
  • Stratford-upon-Avon
  • Bath
  • Bournemouth and Wessex
  • York
  • Aldeburgh
  • Norwich
  • Cheltenham
  • Oxford
  • Brighton
  • Canterbury
  • Liverpool
  • Cambridge
  • Worcester

    Wales

Pageant of Wales, Sophia Gardens, Cardiff
St Fagan's Folk Festival, Cardiff
Welsh Hillside Farm Scheme, Dolhendre
'''Arts Festivals'''

Scotland

Exhibitions
  • Industrial Power, Glasgow
  • Contemporary Books, Glasgow
  • "Living Traditions" – Scottish Architecture and Crafts, Edinburgh
  • 18th Century Books, Edinburgh
Arts Festivals
Gathering of the Clans, Edinburgh
Scots Poetry Competition
Masque of St. Andrews, St. Andrews

Northern Ireland

Ulster Farm and Factory, Belfast
'''Arts Festival'''

Travelling exhibitions

Festival Ship Campania,: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
  • Southampton
  • Dundee
  • Newcastle
  • Hull
  • Plymouth
  • Bristol
  • Cardiff
  • Belfast
  • Birkenhead
  • Glasgow
Land Travelling Exhibition : England
Construction of the South Bank site opened up a new public space, including a riverside walkway, where previously there had been warehouses and working-class housing. The layout of the South Bank site was intended to showcase the principles of urban design that would feature in the post-war rebuilding of London and the creation of the new towns. These included multiple levels of buildings, elevated walkways and avoidance of a street grid. Most of the South Bank buildings were International Modernist in style, little seen in Britain before the war.
The architecture and display of the South Bank Exhibition were planned by the Festival Office's Exhibition Presentation Panel, whose members were:
  • Gerald Barry, Director-General, Chairman
  • Cecil Cooke, Director, Exhibitions, Deputy Chairman
  • Misha Black
  • G. A. Campbell, Director, Finances and Establishments
  • Hugh Casson, Director, Architecture
  • Ian Cox, Director, Science and Technology
  • A. D. Hippisley Coxe, Council of Industrial Design
  • James Gardner
  • James Holland
  • M. Hartland Thomas, Council of Industrial Design
  • Ralph Tubbs
  • Peter Kneebone, Secretary
The theme of the Exhibition was devised by Ian Cox.
The Exhibition comprised the Upstream Circuit: "The Land", the Dome of Discovery, the Downstream Circuit: "The People", and other displays.

Upstream Circuit: "The Land"

Architect: Misha Black
Theme: Ian Cox
Display Design: James Holland
The exhibits comprised:
  • The Land of Britain.
  • The Natural Scene
  • The Country.
  • Minerals of the Island
  • Power and Production
  • Sea and Ships.
  • Transport.