The 1950s was a decade defined by fears of nuclear warfare and the aftershocks of the Second World War, a tension brought into sharp focus when looking at the National Library of Scotland’s collection of Civil Defence film strips. Produced between 1951 and 1956, with the majority falling in 1952-3, the film strips visualise these escalating fears, emphasising a need to “prepare to defend against modern weapons capable of effecting in a single raid far greater destruction and loss of life than before.” They also offer practical support and, for example when addressing volunteers from the Welfare Section, sought to model behaviour by “showing imaginative understanding” in order to “mitigate the hardships” of both those displaced and those impacted by displacement. For the government, film strips represented a cheap, rapid way to distribute standardised information and training packages across the country, recruiting volunteers and preparing them for their role.
Each film strip was accompanied by a series of lecture notes, providing each ‘trainer’ with a detailed script and instructions on when to turn the lights out and when to switch to the next strip. Each booklet offers both a brief overview of how to use film strips and also a description of the imagined trainer, student, and lecture. The idealised trainer should “use every possible device to maintain the interest of the class,” while the student “is largely dependent on his five senses for acquiring knowledge.” Film strips uniquely cater to this premise, adopting what in modern parlance is known as dual coding, as the trainer speaks over the visuals, using simultaneous stimuli to embed information more effectively in the minds of the students.
The film strips also provide a historical example of constructivism, incorporating, and building on, learners’ own lived experiences. In the case of the Civil Defence, the Second World War is a recurring reference point, remembered “vividly” by their volunteers and evoked through statements that outline how the Civil Defence can prevent a return to such “heart-breaking scenes.”
The film strips invite modern comparisons (emergency feeding can be seen as a precursor to modern soup kitchens, with some canteens constructed during this period still operating today) and, in their narrative structure, follow a largely familiar, and enduring, pattern. The film strips first present a typical problem, then outline the solution for volunteers, before finally contextualising this individual work within the wider national campaign. In so doing, the film strips position the volunteers as part of a collective, national action, spreading and circulating these messages across the nation.
Ava Byrne, University of Edinburgh