Here are “my” posters again… well, I have written the most about them I’m still watching the programme, and it seems to be mostly about “Art” with a capital A, which many posters are not considered as, but the initial summary shows Presenter Alastair Sooke talking to the Art Dept @ the Imperial War Museum about the Keep Calm and Carry On Posters.

See just before 25 minutes in … straight in with Keep Calm and Carry On… but no mention of the fact that Keep Calm and Carry On was never used, and the great quote I believe I used in my thesis, Times describing ‘Freedom is in Peril’ as ‘patronising & insipid’. YES – the posters are more iconic than much art, because they faced everyone (and his name is Abram Games, not Abraham Games !)…

Unidentifiable posters in the background...

This looks a bit like "Feed the Pigs" in the Background!

Evacuation

Careless Talk Costs Lives

Interestingly, I didn’t recognise any of the posters, but the above is MOST DEFINITELY not a real wartime poster (here’s one of the real ones), interesting decision by the BBC not to use real posters!

Dalek to Victory

http://imdoctorwho.blogspot.com/2010/04/dalek-victory-poster.html

Keep Calm and Exterminate

http://lifetheuniverseandcombom.blogspot.com/2010/04/doctor-who-daleks-wwii-keep-calm.html

Talking to Linda Barker, I appear for about, ooo, 10 seconds, and then again a bit later in the programme! A lot of the information from my PhD also makes its way into the words coming from Linda Barker’s mouth… and there’s a few ways that things have been interpreted that I might take issue with, but that’s the way TV programmes get made! The t-shirt is from Barter Books.

I will probably be one of the last to see it, as I will have to wait for iPlayer, but you can watch on Sky if you have it! Filming was undertaken at the Imperial War Museum about a month ago… it was quite a rush to get there in time, but a novel and enjoyable experience being interviewed by Linda Barker (Changing Rooms fame)

Once Linda had finished interviewing Richard Slocombe (who I must contact!), Curator at the Imperial War Museum, we disappeared into the new “Ministry of Food” exhibition, which would open two days later. We found a set of posters which the Museum had indicated would not cause copyright issues, and took around an hour to pull some footage together. The entire segment is expected to be 9 minutes, so I look forward to my 30 seconds of fame… no I don’t know which bits they’ve used either!

The other week I was filmed for ‘Inside Out North East’, and this will be shown (in the North East) on Monday evening, but will then be available on iPlayer afterwards.  I have had a few questions as to why I am on in the North East when I am based in the South. The 21st century poster story starts in a bookshop in Alnwick… Barter Books…

A great video from the Imperial War Museum, for the newly launched exhibition “Ministry of Food“.  “During the Second World War, getting the most from your little plot of land was crucial. This film, produced by the Ministry of Agriculture in 1941, explains how to prepare an area of ground for growing your veg, and shows why not having space is simply no excuse.”

The Imperial War Museum can be found on Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and Facebook, so plenty of ways to follow the exhibits.

There’s a great bit of coverage in Culture 24, and I hadn’t realised until we came to the end of filming last Wednesday (for BBC Inside Out North East, interviewed by Linda Barker, don’t know when it’s going to be aired yet), that the exhibition hadn’t yet opened. The Museum has put on a display a number of it’s great Home Front posters, and a number of displays which attempt to “give a sense” of what life was like on the Home Front in the Second World War.

• ‘Battle of Britain‘
• ‘Evacuees’
• ‘Rationing‘
• ‘Come Home‘
• ‘Go to it‘
• ‘Royals‘
• ‘Coventry‘
• ‘Little Things‘
• ‘Society‘
• ‘London Burning‘
• ‘Sweet Rationing‘
• ‘Time To Remember‘
• ‘Weddings‘