They’re rolling back

10:10am Saturday 15th March 2008

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IF YOU can remember anything about the Sixties, you weren't really there, Jefferson Airplane's co-founder Paul Kantner once said.

An awful lot of people weren't there, in that case. Because we all have our favourite Sixties memories - even those of us who really weren't there.

"Miniskirts might have been great for men but they were not very convenient to wear."

Sherri Steel

Whether it was the music (the Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Animals, The Who), the style (has there ever been anything to rival the curves of a Lambretta scooter?), the fashion (Mary Quant and miniskirts) or the space age ("This is one small step."), the decade had something for everyone.

In the words of one of the information panels at the York Castle Museum's new Sixties exhibition, this was a decade of change, political activism, transition and turbulence.

It was a decade when the modern world of instant communications, in-your-face advertising and mass consumerism was born. The decade of free love, pop art and counter culture, when youth came of age, National Service ended, alternative lifestyles became mainstream, outer space was conquered - and, perhaps, a certain innocence was lost.

And none of what was going on was quite as simple as it seemed. Take the whole free love and sexual liberation thing, for a start.

Miniskirts might have been great for men, says Sherri Steel, the Castle Museum's curator of social history. "But they were not very convenient to wear."

Ditto free love. "There's quite a lot of feeling now that the whole Summer of Love, free love thing might have been good for men," Sherri says. "But women did perhaps feel that they were expected to go along with it. There was a lot of pressure."

In fact, while the pill came into use in the Sixties, it was only available for married women - and on a limited basis, Sherri says.

It wasn't until the Seventies that the pill became widely available. And it wasn't until the Seventies that the feminist movement really took off either. In the Sixties, more women started going to university. But then they found themselves forced back into the same roles they had always occupied, as mothers and carers.

"They were going to university, yet when they got married they were being forced into the same patterns," Sherri said. Nothing had changed at work, either. "There was no equal pay, no equal opportunities."

In many other ways, however, the Sixties really was the decade in which everything began to change and the modern world took shape.

Trying to capture this in a museum exhibition hasn't been easy, admits Sherri. The Sixties experience' which opens on Wednesday has been more than a year in the planning and preparation.

All the signs are, however, that it has been worth the wait.

When The Press visited for a preview the finishing touches were still being put in place.

Signs were being affixed, displays arranged. The iconic Lambretta scooter hadn't yet been wheeled into place, and a full-sized replica of a Mercury space capsule in which the first astronauts ventured into space was nowhere to be seen.

But there was enough to make it clear this will be an exhibition to stir the imagination. And where pieces were missing, Sherri and fellow social history curator Katy Turner were more than ready to fill in the gaps.

An entire gallery has been turned over to the exhibition, which is to become a permanent fixture.

Walk in, and you are greeted by an introductory panel and audio-visual display. Then comes the exhibition proper.

That beautiful Lambretta scooter - missing only a parka-clad Mod - will be waiting to greet you.

On the left will be a display dedicated to the music of the Sixties. Life-sized silhouettes of the four Beatles will take pride of place here - along with a cabinet of Beatles memorabilia.

Among them is a poster from the York Rialto dated March 13, 1963. Headlining that night were Americans Chris Montez and Tommy Roe, with support from The Terry Young Six, Debbie Lee and The Viscounts.

Propping up the foot of the bill were a new, dynamic young British group with that odd beatnik name: The Beatles.

In the next cabinet is an authentic Dansette record player - the kind that transformed the lives of teenagers because for the first time they could listen to their own music in their own bedrooms with their own record player.

Best of all, visitors will be able to recreate that Sixties sound for themselves. The exhibition will feature an authentic Sixties juke box - and you'll be able to choose which tunes it plays.

This exhibition isn't just about the music, however.

Between them, Sherri and Katy have tried to cover every aspect of the social explosion that was the Sixties.

So there are sections on fashion, the home (kitchenettes and all that cheap veneer furniture) and Sixties toys (Lego, Meccano, Spirograph and the Sindy doll).

There is a pub' with Sixties-style telephones in which you can listen to recordings of local people talking about their own Sixties memories - authentic oral history in practice.

There is stuff about the counter-culture - satire, TW3, distrust of authority, Vietnam and the peace movement - a section on pop art, and a tribute to the space age that includes that full-sized replica of the Mercury space capsule.

All this and the Summer of Love and Youth Culture, too.

It is a brave attempt to capture an astonishing decade. It was, says Sherri, a time of "excitement, vibrancy, the feeling that it was an era of change".

Visitors will get a sense of all of that at the Castle Museum from Wednesday. And they will have some of those lost memories restored.

The Sixties at the York Castle Museum opens to the public on Wednesday. Entry is free with a YorkCard. Otherwise, from Friday, March 21 when prices go up, admission to the museum will be as follows: Adult: £7.50; Concession: £6.50; Child: £4