Question Bank

This is the place for Creative Partners and teachers to store their questions about the topic, White City (the exhibition site, the 1908 Olympics and the area circa 1908 and since). We do know the answers to most of these, but this is simply for storing questions.

- What was there before the exhibition?

- Does anything of the pavilions or landscaping remain?

- How were the structures made?

- What were the different exhibitions that showed there?

- How long was it used for exhibitions and when did it become the BBC site?

- Who designed and built it?

- What happened to it during the 1914-1918 war?

- Was it used for the 1910 Coronation?

- In the Franco-British exhibition, the first one, what did the French bring to it?

- What were the two ‘villages’ like in the first exhibition (the Irish village and the Senegalese village)?

- Where were the photos taken from? (How did they get up so high?) 

- How did people imagine it and talk about it, especially if they never visited it? How do we imagine now that it’s gone?

- What are the origins and meanings of words like oriental and pavilion and place names?

- What was happening in the rest of the world at the time? (What was the relationship between the French and British? What was happening to the British Empire? etc)

- What was Hammersmith (Shepherd’s Bush, White City etc) like at this time?

- Did local people visit the exhibitions?

- How far did people travel to come to the exhibitions?

- What were the three schools like around 1908?