Festival of Britain

The tradition & historical record

The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition and fair held throughout the United Kingdom in the summer of 1951. Funded chiefly by the government at a cost of £12 million, it was intended to give the British public a sense of recovery and progress after the devastation of the Second World War, and to promote British science, technology, industrial design, architecture and the arts. It proved immensely popular, with more than ten million paid admissions to its six main exhibitions, and helped reshape British arts, crafts and design for a generation. The Festival grew out of a proposal to celebrate the centenary of the Great Exhibition of 1851. Labour Party cabinet member Herbert Morrison took charge in 1947 and shaped it into a uniquely British event: unlike a World Fair, it excluded international themes and the British Commonwealth, focusing entirely on Britain and its achievements. The Labour government was losing support, and the festival served the implicit goal of demonstrating successful national recovery. The Festival's centrepiece was on the South Bank of the Thames in London. There were also events in Poplar (Architecture – Lansbury Estate), Battersea (the Festival Pleasure Gardens), South Kensington (Science) and Glasgow (Industrial Power). ¹

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. ¹

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. ¹

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 4,000 mi (6,400 km) and eight countries. The University of Brighton Design Archives have digitised many of the Design Council's files relating to the planning of the festival. ¹

Exhibitions ¹

South Bank, London (4 May – 30 September) Science, South Kensington (4 May – 30 September) Architecture, Poplar (3 May – 30 September) Books, South Kensington (5 May – 30 September) 1851 Centenary Exhibition, South Kensington (1 May – 11 October) Festival of British Films, London (4 June – 17 June) Festival Pleasure Gardens, Battersea Park, London (3 May – 3 November) London Season of the Arts (3 May – 30 June) Arts Festivals ¹

Stratford-upon-Avon (24 March – 27 October) Bath (20 May – 2 June) Bournemouth and Wessex (3 June – 17 June) York (3 June – 17 June) Aldeburgh (8 June – 17 June) Norwich (18 June – 30 June) Cheltenham (2 July – 14 July) Oxford (2 July – 16 July) Brighton (16 July – 25 August) Canterbury (18 July – 10 August) Liverpool (22 July – 12 August) Cambridge (30 July – 18 August) Worcester (2 September – 7 September) ¹

Pageant of Wales, Sophia Gardens, Cardiff St Fagan's Folk Festival, Cardiff Welsh Hillside Farm Scheme, Dolhendre Arts Festivals ¹

Exhibitions ¹

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 ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Festival of Britain”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

Festival of Britain is national exhibition in the United Kingdom, 1951, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 10 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²