Your Memories Wanted

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The Exhibition Team at the Science Museum are asking people to send in their post-war memories for a forthcoming exhibition.   

The Science Museum is putting together a new exhibition on post-war Britain, opening in spring 2008. The exhibition will look at national and domestic technology in Britain in the period 1946-1970 and will display many of the wonderful objects held in the national collections.

On the domestic side, the curators plan to look specifically at post war austerity and the introduction of consumer technology into the domestic home. This section of the exhibition will therefore cover such things as, ‘my first TV’, the Britain Can Make It exhibition (1946) & the Festival of Britain (1951), the post-war use of utility furniture, prefabs and the rise of DIY.

As part of the display they would like very muh to include personal memories of people who experienced life in Britain in the postwar era and they are hoping this is something 50Connect readers can help with. 

They are, for example, looking for short sound bites that summarise people's experiences of encountering domestic technology in the home for the first time in the 1950s and 1960s. We are especially interested to know when they acquired the consumer goods and what their first impressions of using them were. Did they, for example, find the technology difficult to use? Did they have to wait a long time before they could purchase it? Did Why did they choose the particular brands they chose? Were they involved themselves in the manufacture of white goods?

We are covering such a wide range of domestic goods in the display but would be especially interested to hear about peoples' ownership of TVs, washing machines, fridges, irons, coffee makers, cine cameras, record players, power drills and cars.

They are collecting personal memories over the next 4 to 6 weeks, and then select some for inclusion in the exhibition.  All records will be kept in a special file held in the Science Museum's Documentation Centre as a permanent and valuable reference document of the post war period.

If you are able to help, email stephanie.millard@sciencemuseum.org.uk or write to Stephanie Millard, Exhibitions Team, Science Museum, Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London SW7 2DD.  Web link: www.sciencemuseum.org.uk.

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