LSE Lit Fest 2017: curator Victoria Broackes introduces 5 Key Objects in V & A Exhibition, ‘You Say You Want a Revolution?: Records and Rebels 1966-1970’

You Say You Want a Revolution?: Records and Rebels 1966-1970, the exhibition showing at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum until 26 February 2017, explores the ways that youth culture set out to create a better world through an optimistic idealism that motivated people to come together and question established power structures across every area of society. In this way it brought about the changes that have underpinned how we have lived for the past 50 years. The music, photography, posters, literature, design, film, fashion and performance that defined the counterculture illustrate how a whole generation shook off the confines of the past, radically revolutionising the ways they lived their lives. Yet the exhibition is designed to be as much about today as it is about these five years between 1966 and 1970. It surrounds the visitor in the politics, culture and society of the late 1960s as well as the inevitable parallels with life today: both the intended and unintended consequences and outcomes. Following her discussion of the exhibition for the LSE Literary Festival 2017, currently exploring the theme of ‘Revolutions’ through a diverse programme of events, co-curator Victoria Broackes introduces five key objects to view in the show