FESTIVAL FIGURES
Herbert Morrison
The Labour politician had been a prominent member of the wartime coalition government, and was deputy prime minister in 1947 when he was given responsibility for the proposed festival. He was enthusiastic, viewing it as a means of giving the British people a pat on the back for their post-war achievements and sacrifices. In 1955, Morrison was defeated by Hugh Gaitskell in his bid to replace Clement Attlee as leader of the Labour Party. After he retired in 1959 he was created a life peer.
Sir Gerald Barry
The journalist and editor was appointed Director General of the Festival by Herbert Morrison in 1948. He was responsible for choosing and leading the team that organised the event, and famously hoped it would provide “a tonic to the nation”. Its success was one of his major achievements. He was knighted in 1951, and afterwards chaired the Barbican Committee, and was in charge of Granada TV’s educational broadcasting.
Sir Hugh Casson
Hugh Casson was appointed Director of Architecture for the Festival of Britain at the age of 38. He was knighted for the part he played in its success. Afterwards, he became well known for writing, broadcasting and painting. He designed sets for Glyndebourne Festival Opera, ran the school of interior design at the Royal College of Art and was president of the Royal Academy of Arts. Casson taught the Prince of Wales to paint and designed the interior of the Royal Yacht Britannia.
Abram Games
One of the most influential graphic designers of the 20th century, Abram Games created the Festival Star, the symbol that appeared on posters, guides, catalogues, souvenirs and the side of the Festival Ship Campania. The Star, with its geometric, heraldic elements, encapsulates what is now known as “Festival Style”. Games designed posters for the War Office; later clients included British Overseas Airways Corporation, Guinness and British Railways.
Powell & Moya
The futuristic Skylon was a 300-feet tall, cigar-shaped tower built from steel and aluminium and supported by cables, a beacon to the Festival and one of its highlights. It was designed by architects Hidalgo Moya and Philip Powell, with structural engineer Felix Samuely. Powell and Moya had met while studying and won a prestigious competition to build a housing complex in Pimlico while still only in their 20s. They became known for their “humane modernism” and designed several buildings for Oxford and Cambridge colleges.
“All the details – lamp posts and litter bins, direction signs and café furniture – were as carefully considered as the buildings,” Hugh Casson wrote. “It became, in its way, a pattern book for our new urban landscapes, and its influence – with all its faults – is with us still.” According to the V&A museum, the Festival had a lasting impact on the nation’s design aesthetic, promoting an optimistic view of Britain’s future.
In villages, towns and cities around the country, the Festival was an occasion for what one guidebook described as “national springcleaning, for repointing and repainting the town hall, gilding the church clock, for planting window boxes, and temporary gardens, for painting the street lamps, decorating the streets and floodlit buildings.”
There was a more permanent legacy, however, with long-lasting schemes also planned: “Like a new sewerage system or changing the street lights from gas to electricity . . . Houses, cottages and clubs have been built for old age pensioners. Playing fields and sports clubs have been made or improved . . . There are places where 1951 will see the foundation stone of the new town hall or where a new park will be opened for the first time
. . . In some places, a village hall has been built and in others, where money has yet to be found, the events arranged by the local Festival may open the account.”
Seventy years on and a 21st-century national celebration is in the final months of its development, once again coming in the wake of long-running crises that have exhausted the nation.
Director Martin Green says that his aims for Festival UK* 2022 are threefold: to bring the nation together, to showcase our creativity and innovation to the world, and to bring some greatly needed “joy, hope and happiness” to a country that has been through a divisive and difficult time.
Some have mockingly called it a festival of Brexit, but the aims are not overtly political. Running throughout 2022, the Festival will combine science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (collectively known as STEAM). Announced by Theresa May in 2018, and allocated £120 million of taxpayer’s money, it will be designed “by established organisations and renowned individuals, working alongside underrepresented voices and emerging talent”.
Green wants the Festival to be forward-looking. Plenty of nostalgia will be provided next year in any case, by the Queen’s platinum jubilee and the BBC’s centenary. He says its aim of reaching as many people as possible means that the Festival is unlikely to be a single event on one day in a specific place. The final programme is due to be announced, along with a new brand, this autumn.
Hugh Casson’s summary of the Festival of Britain was that “The nation was alerted to possibilities and opportunities hitherto undreamed of.” Festival UK* 2022 hopes to follow in those laudable footsteps, and Green has said: “If you are looking to move forward, if you’re looking to find common ground, if you’re looking to, on a really basic level, share some joy and hope and community, then the best tool . . . we have is our creativity. Creativity solves problems.”
It is perhaps also to be hoped, as we find our way through troubled times, that the new festival will accomplish what Casson believed was the real achievement of 1951: “It made people want things to be better, and to believe that they could be.”