Facing the World Differently? Seventy years on from the Britain Can Make It Exhibition

Deadline for abstracts: 11th March 2016

Keynotes: Professor Jonathan Woodham and Dr Paddy Maguire (University of Brighton)

In 1946 the exhibition, Britain Can Make It, was held at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. The exhibition reflected a desire to reaffirm Britain’s global position in design and manufacturing after World War Two. This symposium – held seventy years on – examines this desire in the context of colonial legacies and the parallel ambitions of its former allies and enemies to capitalise on the potential of design to make a difference. It continues the project of re-evaluation which began at Britain Can Make It’s fiftieth anniversary, with an analysis of the exhibition’s archive, held in the University of Brighton Design Archives, which culminated in Design and Cultural Politics in Postwar Britain: The “Britain Can Make It” Exhibition of 1946 (ed. Jonathan Woodham and Patrick Maguire).

Focusing on specific themes, the symposium asks how could Britain make it as the world realigned and reconfigured politically, economically and culturally? What were the implications of its imperial models of design practice, education, exhibition and professional organisation? And what of now and the future: can Britain still make a distinctive and ethical contribution? Alongside this, we intend to reassess the Britain Can Make It exhibition and the myth-making processes that have ensured its position within the history of design in Britain.

Organised by the Internationalising Design History research cluster at the University of Brighton, this one-day symposium invites proposals for papers of 20 minutes in length to consider the following themes:

• The legacies and discontents of Britain’s imperial design models
• Decolonisation and the geographies of design: reform and social responsibility
• International, national, regional and local: design organisations, networks, agencies and education
• The politics of national display: enterprise, trade and industry

Papers are also welcome that contribute to the reassessment of the exhibition and/or use it as a starting point. Focusing on design in its many guises, we welcome proposals from those working in design history and adjacent fields: design practice, visual and material culture, business and economic history, architectural history, cultural, social and political history.

Please submit 250-word proposals and a 100 word biography by email to Myra Stuart at M.Stuart@brighton.ac.uk by the deadline of 11th March 2016.