# Canonical recap data for Festival of Britain (1951)
# Source: https://recap.at/1951/festival-britain
# Format: YAML 1.2 (UTF-8). Generated at request time.
slug: festival-britain
canonicalUrl: "https://recap.at/1951/festival-britain"
title: Festival of Britain
subtitle: This national exposition celebrated Britain's postwar recovery and embodied modernist optimism, becoming a cultural turning point for the nation.
recapType: global_event
eventStatus: concluded
startDate: 1951-03-24
endDate: 1951-11-03
datePrecision: day
year: 1951
decade: 1950
country:
name: United Kingdom
slug: united-kingdom
summaryShort: The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition and fair held throughout the United Kingdom in the summer of 1951. Funded chiefly by the government at a cost of £12 million, it was intended to give the British public a sense of recovery and progress after the devastation of the Second World War, and to promote Britis
summaryLong: "The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition and fair held throughout the United Kingdom in the summer of 1951. Funded chiefly by the government at a cost of £12 million, it was intended to give the British public a sense of recovery and progress after the devastation of the Second World War, and to promote British science, technology, industrial design, architecture and the arts. It proved immensely popular, with over ten million paid admissions to its six main exhibitions, and helped reshape British arts, crafts and design for a generation. The Festival grew out of a proposal to celebrate the centenary of the Great Exhibition of 1851. Labour Party cabinet member Herbert Morrison took charge in 1947 and shaped it into a uniquely British event: unlike a World Fair, it excluded international themes and the British Commonwealth, focusing entirely on Britain and its achievements. The Labour government was losing support, and the festival served the implicit goal of demonstrating successful national recovery. The Festival's centrepiece was on the South Bank of the Thames in London. There were also events in Poplar, Battersea, South Kensington (Science) and Glasgow. Festival celebrations 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. Journalist Harry Hopkins highlighted the widespread impact of the \"Festival style\", which people called \"Contemporary\":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 colors."
heroImageUrl: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a3/Festival_of_Britain.JPG/1280px-Festival_of_Britain.JPG"
heroImageCredit: Wikipedia · "Festival of Britain"
importance: 74
sourceConfidence: 75
keyFacts: []
timeline: []
sources:
- url: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festival_of_Britain"
  title: Festival of Britain
  provider: Wikipedia
related: []
categories:
- festival
metaDescription: "The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition and fair held throughout the United Kingdom in the summer of 1951. Funded chiefly by the government at a cost "
wikidataQid: Q2663784
archiveSnapshots:
- url: "https://web.archive.org/web/20260628161521/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festival_of_Britain"
  capturedAt: 2026-06-28
  label: Festival of Britain
  originalUrl: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festival_of_Britain"
