Festival Guide

The 70th anniversary of the Festival of Britain

Festival Guide

Festival of Britain South Bank Exhibition Guide written by Ian Cox

In 2021 various organisations will mark the 70th anniversary of the Festival of Britain (held from May to September 1951) with talks, lectures and symposia. Following on from her previous research into the Festival, Harriet has been invited to contribute in several ways.

To mark the founding of the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) in 1951, the museum is running a project called 51-voices. Harriet was invited to focus on an item from the Festival in MERL’s large collection of objects and ephemera and wrote this piece about the Festival’s South Bank Exhibition Guide. She was interviewed by Bill Buckley on BBC Radio Berkshire about the Festival Guide on 19th March 2021.

Harriet’s invited feature about the refugees who designed the Festival of Britain was in the May 2021 issue of BBC History Magazine. She was interviewed on the same theme for an episode of History Extra podcast available here.

Cover BBC History May 1951

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Harriet was a guest on Ayesha Hazarika and Luke Jones’s show with Times Radio Breakfast on Monday 3rd May 2021 at 54 minutes.

Harriet gave a free public talk about refugee contributions to the Festival of Britain as part of the programme of the Insiders/ Outsiders Festival (co-organised for the Festival’s 70th anniversary with the Southbank Centre and Twentieth Century Society) on 5th May 2021 at 6pm. The talk was recorded and is available here.

HARRIET’S PREVIOUS WORK ON THE FESTIVAL

Harriet’s published work on the Festival includes her book The Festival of Britain: a land and its people (I.B. Tauris, 2012), an invited chapter ‘”The first modern townscape?” The Festival of Britain, townscape and the Picturesque’ in Pendlebury, Erten and Larkham (eds.) Alternative Visions of Post-War Reconstruction (Routledge, 2015), an invited catalogue essay for the Jewish Museum’s Designs on Britain: Great British design by Great Jewish designers (Jewish Museum London, 2017), an invited chapter on ‘Artists and the Festival of Britain’ for Monica Bohm-Duchen (ed) Insiders/ Outsiders: Refugees from Nazi Europe and their Contribution to British Visual Culture (Lund Humphries, 2019), an essay ‘A “New Picturesque”? The Aesthetics of British Reconstruction after World War Two‘ for Edinburgh Architecture Research (2008) and an invited essay on the Festival for Findling & Pelle’s Encyclopedia of world’s fairs and expositions (McFarland, 2008). She completed her PhD on the design of the Festival of Britain with the Royal College of Art/ V&A History of Design programme in 2006, supervised by Professor Jeremy Aynsley and Professor David Crowley and examined by Professor Barry Curtis (UAL) and Professor David Matless (Nottingham).

Harriet led various activities to mark the Festival’s 60th anniversary, acting as consultant to Southbank Centre, writing text for ‘The Museum of 1951’ exhibition, which culminated in a permanent display and arranging a major event at Royal Festival Hall to mark the end of the 60th anniversary programming, in September 2011. She was interviewed for a Radio 3 Sunday Feature presented by Sir John Tusa, ‘Don’t Make Fun of the Festival’, wrote a piece about archaeology in the Festival for British Archaeology November/ December 2011 and a piece about Festival style ‘All the World is Coming to London’ for Mid Century Magazine. Harriet has also written obituaries of Festival designers and administrators including Paul Wright for The Independent.

A Festival of Brexit?

On Tuesday 5th November, Harriet was interviewed by James O’Malley, journalist and creator of the Pod Delusion podcast about the government’s idea for a 2022 Festival of Brexit, which, despite being subject to much criticism when it was first announced in 2018, was revealed this week still to be in development. Harriet talked about the critical reception of the Festival of Britain in 1951 and the Millennium Dome in 2000 and the potential for an event in 2022 to be successful. Listen to the conversation here at 14.50.

While AHRC Fellow Harriet has been researching in an extensive private archive of material about the development and design of the Millennium Dome.