History in the Limelight

Description of Activity

The 1924 Pageant of Empire: Modernity, spectacle and re-imagining space

Pageants are often thought of as archaic, backward-looking and the antithesis of modernity. Scholars have also tended to overlook their identity as forms of visual culture and spectacle. In this paper I challenge these views by focusing on the distinctive pageants of Frank Lascelles, ‘the man who staged the Empire’. I examine Lascelles’ Pageant of Empire, held at the old Wembley or Empire Stadium in 1924 as part of a programme of music festivals and sporting events accompanying the British Empire Exhibition. I focus on the ways in which Lascelles and his collaborators, notably the artist-craftsman Frank Brangwyn, transformed the architecture and space of Wembley Stadium. Through ambitious props and scenery that incorporated the 100,000 strong audience into the spectacle of the pageant, Lascelles and Brangwyn turned the stadium into an amphitheatre, staging tableaux of the British Empire. The enormous cast of over 15,000 volunteer ‘pageanteers’, including visitors from the Dominions and Colonies and an assortment of exotic animals, were drilled in a semblance of spontanaeity into massed formations, making striking use of colour to abstract effect, to music by Edward Elgar and others rather than spoken words. Both pageanteers and audience were active participants in the spectacle of the pageant, re-imagining the stadium through different times and places. Focusing on the material and visual culture of the Pageant of Empire, I argue that the polymaths Lascelles and Brangwyn transformed Wembley Stadium into a new ‘modern’ form of spectacle that went beyond theatre and drama, drawing on their experience and innovation in architecture, interiors, decorative arts, craft and design.

Period	10 Sept 2016
Event type	Conference
Location	London, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International