Turning back time to remember the Festival of Britain

Walsall Museum is celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Festival of Britain with a display of vintage costume from the early 1950s.

The display showcases both women's and children's attire, covering both practical but stylish outfits for daytime wear and sumptuous frocks for the evening.

There is also a small selection of souvenirs from the Festival itself, illustrating the spirit of hope and optimism in the air as Britain recovered from the austerities of the Second World War and late 1940s.

The souvenirs are on loan from The Land of Lost Content, the National Museum of British Popular Culture, based in Craven Arms, Shropshire.

The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition which opened in London and around Britain in May 1951. It was an attempt to give Britons a feeling of recovery and progress and to promote better-quality design in the rebuilding of British towns and cities following the war, as well as celebrating the centenary of the 1851 Great Exhibition.

The display can be seen until September 3 in The Changing Face of Walsall gallery on the first floor of the Central Library and Museum building.