November 1949: planning the Festival of Britain

The Festival of Britain in 1951 changed London’s landscape completely, with the building of what we now know as the South Bank arts complex — the Royal Festival and Queen Elizabeth Halls, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery, the British Film Institute and the National Theatre. Yet despite its current status as the epicentre of the Capital’s (and arguably the nation’s) cultural life, the site started out with engineering, science and technology at its centre. In 1949, The Engineer reported on the genesis of the Festival of Britain and what its instigators hoped to achieve.

Although the Festival is now perhaps associated with the new beginnings symbolised by the accession of Queen Elizabeth II to the throne in 1952, it was intended to mark the centenary of Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition and to instill some optimism during the dreary years of post-War austerity.

The article drips with the sort of patriotic fervour which is rare in today’s more cirucumspect, and perhaps more cynical times. ‘The South Bank Exhibition will be mainly concerned with those contributions to science, technology and industrial design in which Britain’s prestige stands highest,’ it says.