Louise Bryning
Mirador Arts
10th July 2024
Remember The Beehive, The Top Ten, The Golden Nugget, The Roaring 20s or The Casa Romano?
These were just some of the coffee bars which were the places to be seen for teenagers growing up in Blackpool during the Sixties.
And now they are being mapped as part of Jukebox: The Teenage Revolution, a series of exciting events taking place on Lancashire’s seaside coast celebrating the music and teenage culture of Britain in the Fifties and Sixties.
These decades saw the growth of milk and coffee bars, most of them with jukeboxes, which provided an added attraction for teenagers keen to escape parental gaze and have the freedom to explore their own tastes in music, fashion and style.
And the Ditchburn Equipment company in Blackpool and Lytham St Annes was the birthplace of the distinctive British jukebox.
Jukebox: The Teenage Revolution is supported with a £50,904 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, thanks to National Lottery players. The project is also funded by Arts Council England, The Granada Foundation and the Garfield Weston Foundation.
During two mapping sessions at the Stanley Park Visitor Centre, people with memories of Blackpool’s many coffee bars aimed to identify their locations which will result in the publication of online and printed Blackpool coffee bar maps.
“It’s been great to have our enthusiastic participants share their memories and help us research the old Blackpool maps,” said Steve Fairclough, engagement officer with Mirador, the Lancashire-based arts and heritage charity running the project with Lancaster University Library.
“It was very interesting to hear stories of the Sixties coffee bars and how an outing would lead from one to another. Also how the trends of young people changed, through the music and the style of the coffee bars.”
Anyone with memories of being a teenager in the Fifties and Sixties or photographs from that era, please contact Mirador at: http://miradorarts.co.uk/get-in-touch