Britain Can Make It

To mark the 70th anniversary of the 1946 Britain Can Make It exhibition, the Design Archives have launched several initiatives to provoke research and showcase our resources.   

The original Britain Can Make It catalogue and its supplements have been digitised to increase access to this important research resource. Published by the Council of Industrial Design, the catalogue presents a rich and detailed picture of the design professions and British manufacturing in the postwar years. The Design Archives Document Library contains 8 different publications, completely digitised and presented in an interactive format that allows the user to search and cite each document.

The University of Brighton Design Archives Document Library  

In collaboration with the William Shipley Group for RSA history, and authored by Honorary Fellow Susan Bennett, ‘Royal Designers for Industry and the Britain Can Make It exhibition’ is a new resource highlighting those RDIs whose work was included in the exhibition. Incorporating extensive biographical profiles and portraits of each designer, the resource is a rich exploration of the work of RDIs in the immediate postwar years.

Royal Designers for Industry and the Britain Can Make It exhibition

A symposium entitled Seventy years on from the Britain Can Make It Exhibition, organised by the Internationalising Design History research cluster, takes place on 7 October 2016. To accompany it, Design Archives Archivist, Sue Breakell, has put together a display to showcase some of the extensive archival material relating to the exhibition.

A feature highlighting Design Archives resources relating Britain Can Make It has been compiled by Dr Lesley Whitworth, Deputy Curator, for the homepage of the Archives Portal Europe. Incorporating our catalogues in this international portal is a powerful way to attract researchers from across Europe and around the world.

United Kingdom: Britain Can Make It - a design exhibition, London, 1946