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Having fun was a serious business. The Festival was designed to be inclusive and was underpinned with the idea that any post war freedoms should be enjoyed by everyone.

freedom to dream

Every progressive business now recognises that men and women do not give of their best unless they are shown pretty clearly what they are working for and unless they can feel that in some sense it is their show. Yet we expect many millions of people to toil and if necessary die for their country who live in conditions where they can hardly catch the slightest glimpse of what their country and its civilisation really mean. (Herbert Morrison M.P. in 'The Times Festival Supplement')

The Labour government was adamant that the Festival of Britain should not be a vehicle for promoting its own achievements in office. They deliberately established an independent Festival Council to oversee the project in order to create distance between themselves and the decision making. Yet despite having no explicit input into the Festival's programme, the Festival's overarching philosophy couldn't fail but be influenced by Labour's ideology and social democratic agenda, which had been so popularly endorsed in the 1945 election.

Conceived as a people's show, every aspect of British life was presented to the people. And this was as true in the arts as it was in the sciences. The arts were to be made more popular. As part of the Festival, major art shows were sponsored in the regions, such as the exhibition of contemporary art, 'British Painting 1925-1950', in Manchester. Meanwhile dance companies, such as the Ballet Rambert, toured the country. If everyone's physical health could now be catered for in a National Health Service, so too their spiritual health.

Our school took loads of us to see the exhibition. For the first time in our lives we drank milk that was straight from the cows that were there as part of the farming exhibition.... Being poor in those days we only got to go once (contributor David Harris, aged 12 in 1951) Why not contribute your memories?

art for all

This was the first time I saw a Henry Moore and hens in battery cages (contributor John Freiyer, aged 20 in 1951) Why not contribute your memories?

The Festival of Britain was a triumph for the Arts Council. The organisation was founded in 1945, coming out of the success of the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA), which had organised public musical recitals and theatrical productions during the war. Its aim was to build on CEMA's achievements and to 'increase the accessibility of the fine arts to the public'. The Festival presented an ideal opportunity to put this mission into practice. Over the summer of 1951 the Council supported over twenty arts festivals across the country. Many of these, such as Liverpool, Dumfries and St David's, were organised for the first time. In London a 'Season of the Arts' (LSA) ran between May and June. Visual arts as well as performing arts were supported, including the Whitechapel Art Gallery's exhibition of popular art 'Black Eyes and Lemonade' and the first British retrospective of Henry Moore's work at the Tate Gallery. And the range of arts patronised by the state was expanded when the Arts Council instigated the first poetry competitions.

Without a doubt the Festival helped to establish the Arts Council and helped it to develop as a national body. It also determined, for a period, which arts were worthy of state funding. When the chair of the Arts Council stated that 'nothing is good enough but the best', the best was very much deemed to be established arts. And during the Festival opera, ballet and classical music were heavily promoted and received the greatest funding.

There are many visible signs that the arts in this country can no longer rely on the generosity and the discrimination of the private patron for their welfare. The new order has come about not only because of the material destruction caused by the great wars of this century, and the general social and economic changes which have followed. It is based on something profounder than that - a democratic conviction that has steadily been growing through the years that good art is enjoyable art and should be appreciated by all and sundry, whatever their incomes may be. (Sir Ernest Pooley in the 'London Season of the Arts Programme')