Promises Promises
A Selection from Henry Grant’s Photographic Archive
Henry Grant is a freelance photographer whose work spans the period from 1948 until the present day. He specialised in Educational and allied subjects, his work being published in the Times Educational Supplement and other magazines and journals.
The exhibition is the result of a collaboration between Henry and Rose Grant and the Department of Cultural Studies. It charts the development of state education from the opening of the first comprehensive to the present-day fights against cuts in educational spending. The material is organised to show the relationship between developments in schooling and the social and cultural life of young people.
The exhibition consists of 60 laminated panels approx. 20 x 30 ins. It is a comprehensive and expansive view of postwar education and culture and raises many questions about the achievements and failures of post-war government policy. An important exhibition for all those interested in how education has and does relate to young people’s lives.
Available from November 1983
This exhibition was produced collaboratively by Henry and Rose Grant and the Cockpit Department of Cultural Studies. It looks at the development of post-war state education and its relationship to the changing cultural circumstances of young people. It shows housing conditions immediately after the war, the agitation for change within the labour and trade union movement, the setting up of the NHS under the welfare state, nursery and primary schools in the post-war building programme, the secondary modern schools and the first comprehensives; 50’s mods and rockers; immigration; the new consumerism; 60’s pop culture; the setting up of CND; anti-Vietnam campaigns, student protest and the expansion of higher education; finally high-rise flats and the return of unemployment in the 1970’s.
57 laminated panels (30″ x 20″)
Promises, Promises.. Growing Up in the 1950s and 1960s
An exhibition for schools and colleges based upon Henry Grant’s photographic archive. Andrew Dewdney (Cockpit) worked with Henry and Rose Grant to develop a shared narrative of the post-war British promise of greater social equality and security.
Henry Grant spent many years working as a photographer for The Times Educational Supplement as well as photographing young people and the street life of London. From his extensive archive of photography, the exhibition focused on young people. Starting with The Festival of Britain the exhibition showed conditions in London immediately after the war and charted the programmes of improvement in housing, health and education. In education, it showed the move away from the tripartite system of grammar, technical and secondary schooling based upon the 11 plus examination and towards the embrace of comprehensive education. In addition, Henry’s archive contained documentation on the arrival of the ‘Windrush’ generation and the growing freedom and leisure time of young people, expressed through their fashions and music.
(58 panels 70cm x 50cm)
Henry Grant’s archive is now held by the Museum of London
PROMISES, PROMISES: GROWING UP IN THE FIFTIES AND SIXTIES
BY: HENRY AND ROSE GRANT IN COLLABORATION WITH THE DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL STUDIES.
DATE: 1984
SIZE: 57 Laminated Panels 20″x30″
FUNDED: Dept of Cultural Studies, Cockpit Gallery, GLAA.
SYNOPSIS: Henry Grant worked as a freelance photojournalist from just before the Second World War until the present day. He did a great deal of work for THE TIMES EDUCATIONAL SUPPLEMENT. In 1982 he approached the Department of Cultural Studies to see if it was interested in using any of his pictures. His photographs of young people taken in the 1950’s were a unique historical find and only a small part of an archive of over a quarter of a million negatives. The Department subsequently worked with Henry and his wife Rose, who had been a journalist for THE WORKER, on a regular weekly basis for over a year to produce the exhibition.
The exhibition charts post-war developments in schooling and popular culture and was loosely based on the thinking of the CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL STUDIES, Education Group, as written in their book Unpopular Education. The panels contain selections of Henry’s photos with a simple narrative caption running through the exhibition. It was made with secondary pupils in mind.
AVAILABLE FOR HIRE FROM THE COCKPIT GALLERY
Cockpit Gallery Exhibitions & Cultural Studies projects 1973-89 