A photograph from 1941 shows a hall in use as a feeding centre for destitute families. In the background, the Old Vic theatre company sets up for a performance. Part of a Ministry of Information series documenting the Old Vic’s tour of the South Wales coalfields (1941), it serves as a reminder of economic failure in early twentieth-century Britain. The Old Vic, a home for Shakespeare, opera, and ballet since before the start of the First World War, was one of a number of pre-war and wartime organizations bringing art and education to the people. It was their approach to art for all which largely inspired the establishment of the government Committee (later Council) for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA), the forerunner of the Arts Council. A Ministry of Information film (1942) by Dylan Thomas, Alan Osbiston, and others that documents CEMA’s work shows the arts as an essential and productive part of the war effort, while also making the Keynesian economic case for arts funding. Modest financial support for the arts creates employment (including manual jobs) and life-enhancing consumption (theatre-, gallery-, and concert-going). Since no physical goods are involved, money circulates in the economy without inflation.

In England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, festivals expansively run the gamut from celebrations of flowers, seasonal harvests, and food and drink to the fine arts, music, theatre, and religion, in locations ranging from metropolitan centres, cathedrals, public and private parks and gardens, to locales rural in the extreme. Festivals could be unpredictable, and their organisers doubtless had to navigate uncertainties and last-minute cancellations, not to mention audience reception to programming; perhaps it is that element of unpredictability that gives festivals a general air of anticipation and excitement. This chapter explores post-Second World War festival culture with examples emerging from the Norfolk and Norwich Triennial Festival, the Glyndebourne Opera Festival, the Cheltenham Music Festival (subsequently renamed the Cheltenham Festival of Contemporary British Music), the Three Choirs Festival, the Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts, and the Festival of Britain. The chapter also considers the intersections of the postwar socialised Arts Council funding for music and the arts in the British Isles, and the disparity between funding for metropolitan and rural centres.