The Festival of Britain opened seventy years ago in May 1951, with an energetic programme of exhibitions, arts festivals and local events held around the country. Marking the centenary of the Great Exhibition of 1851, Clement Attlee’s government intended the festivities to boost trade and to give British people a lift after the war, telling a ‘story’ about ‘the British contribution to civilisation’.
Given the overwhelmingly patriotic nature of the events, it is perhaps surprising that dozens of those who were central to devising them were not born or trained in Britain but had arrived recently from Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria and Germany, in order to take refuge from the Nazis. These included German graphic designer FHK Henrion who created displays for two pavilions at the South Bank Exhibition and Czech textile designer Jacqueline Groag, who made displays for the South Bank’s Dome of Discovery.
In this talk Dr. Harriet Atkinson, Senior Lecturer in History of Art and Design at University of Brighton, author of The Festival of Britain: A Land and its People (I.B. Tauris, 2012) and contributor to Insiders/Outsiders; Refugees from Nazi Europe and their Contribution to British Visual Culture (2019), introduces the Festival and talks about some of the key contributions made by recent arrivals to Britain.
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