Festival of Britain

The Festival of Britain was a national art exhibition which was held place in London and later on many other places around Britain, May 1951. The official opening was on 3 May. The main location for the Festival of Britain was on the South Bank Site, in London. Outside of London, major festivals took place in Cardiff, Stratford-upon-Avon, Bath, Perth, Bournemouth, York, Aldeburgh, Inverness,Cheltenham, Oxford and many other bases.

At that time, shortly after the end of World War II, much of London was destroyed and left in ruins and redevelopment of the city was needed desperately. The Festival was to help give Britons a feeling of recovery, redemption, progress and to promote better-quality design in the rebuilding of British towns and cities following the end of the war as sort of a celebration.

The graphic designer for the Festival of Britain poster was Abram Games who had been the Official War Poster artist and whose iconic use of symbols of the Festival remains memorable.

Misha Black, one of the Festival architects, said that the Festival opened up a wide audience for architectural modernism but that it was common factor with professional architects that the design of the Festival was not innovative. The architects also tried to show by their design and layout of the South Bank Festival what could be achieved by applying modern town planning ideas. Numerous amounts of buildings on the main South Bank site became the main symbol of the festival.