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Opposite: The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics, Revolution by Alan Aldridge, 1968Above: Pin badges were popular ways of expressing viewsLeft: Anti-Vietnam demonstrators at the Pentagon Building, Bernie Boston for The Washington Post, 1967Images: © Iconic Images, Alan Aldridge; Getty Images; badges courtesy V&A Museum.structures across every area of society. The people central to these changes were the generation born during and in the aftermath of WW2. In 1947 alone more than a million babies were born in the UK, becoming teenagers in 1960. The same was happening elsewhere: 50% of the US population was under 25 in 1966, and one in three people in France were under 20 in 1967. This new generation wanted to escape the confi nes of the past and their parents’ generation. Growing affl uence and the erosion of traditional class-based societies led to an increasing emphasis on ‘me’. There was a desire to be ‘cosmonauts of Inner Space’, to discover new ways of seeing the world – whether through recreational sex, drugs, eastern religions or esoteric thinking. In a world without mobile phones or personal computing, music – alongside the burgeoning underground press – provided the connectivity for the late 1960s, linking similarly-minded people thousands of miles apart with ideas, words, humour, images and, above all, a sense of community and common aspirations. From London to San Francisco and New York to Berlin, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa and the Grateful Dead (to name just a few) were the soundtrack, giving voice to millions who were inspired to change the world. From action on civil rights, multiculturalism, nuclear weapons, colonialism, environmentalism, consumerism, computing and communality, there was not a single focus, but many, crossing causes and continents. That these revolutions were so extensive and groundbreaking is part of the era’s ongoing appeal and cross-generational relevance. It also makes for a subject so sprawling yet surprisingly interconnected that no exhibition or book could cover it in all-encompassing fashion. We have attempted to move outside the linear story and highlight the often unexpected connections that underpinned these revolutions, but there are inevitably gaps, even with such a broad approach. The 1960s were not, of course, the fi rst time that different ways of living were imagined or implemented, and the exhibition takes as its starting point four documents from the past fi ve centuries that attempt to set out another vision. The year 2016 also marks the 500th anniversary of the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia, in which inhabitants of a fi ctional island reject intolerance, personal gain and property, and instead fi nd peace and contentment as part of a community. Some 300 years later, William Blake ➤ REVOLUTION www.nadfas.org.uk NADFAS REVIEW / WINTER 2016 41