Episode description

Peace, prosperity and formica - that's one way of describing the vision on show at the Festival of Britain in 1951. But domesticity had a radical side and in this Free Thinking conversation, Shahidha Bari talks to researchers Sophie Scott-Brown and Rachele Dini and looks at the domestic appliances selected for display in the newly re-opened Museum of the Home, talking to Director Sonia Solicari about how ideas about home, homelessness and home-making have shaped what is on show.

Museum of the Home, previously the Geffrye Museum re-opened on June 12th 2021 https://www.museumofthehome.org.uk/

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Part of BBC Radio 3's programming tying into the London Festival of Architecture. Madeleine Bunting recorded a series of Essays considering different ideas about home, homesickness, homelessness and Homelands which is being broadcast this week on BBC Radio 3 and available on BBC Sounds.

You might be interested in a Free Thinking discussion called Fiction in 1946 recorded at London's Southbank Centre with Lara Feigel, Kevin Jackson and Benjamin Markovits https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07wrq03

Enid Marx, Edward Bawden and Charles Rennie Mackintosh are discussed in this episode called Designing the Future https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b2mgpl