Festival of Britain 1951 - South Bank Exhibition - Sports Arena Featuring an Athletics Exhibition

            The Postcard

A postally unused postcard that was printed and published by Jarrold and Sons Ltd. of Norwich, England. On the back of the card they have printed:

'Festival of Britain 1951.
Officially Authorised Series.
Greetings from the Festival
of Britain.'

The 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. Historian Kenneth O. Morgan stated that the Festival was a "triumphant success" during which:

"People flocked to the South Bank site, to wander 
around the Dome of Discovery, gaze at the Skylon, 
and generally enjoy a festival of national celebration. 
Up and down the land, lesser festivals enlisted much 
civic and voluntary enthusiasm. 
A people curbed by years of total war and half-crushed 
by austerity and gloom, showed that it had not lost the 
capacity for enjoying itself.
Above all, the Festival made a spectacular setting as a 
showpiece for the inventiveness and genius of British 
scientists and technologists".

Labour 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 Great 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 (shown in the photograph). There were events in Poplar (Architecture), Battersea (the Festival Pleasure Gardens), South Kensington (Science) and Glasgow (Industrial Power). 

Festival celebrations also 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 popular ones. It helped reshape British arts, crafts, design and sports for a generation. 

Journalist Harry Hopkins highlighted the widespread impact of the "Contemporary Festival style". 

"It was clean, bright and new.... It caught hold 
quickly and spread first across London and 
then across England....In an island hitherto 
largely given up to gravy browns and dull 
greens, "Contemporary" boldly espoused 
strong primary colours".
   

Taken on: August 6, 2023

Tags:

postcard

old

nostalgia

nostalgic

Festival

Britain

1951

Jarrold

Sons

Norwich

37RTS22

1947

1851 « less

Sets appears in: • Exhibitions • London

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