Festival of Britain

Common card · No. 200265

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...

Read on Wikipedia · Image The Festival of Britain 1951, Public domain