I have outlined the origins at the Independent Group (IG) at some length elsewhere, but the key to understanding the formation of the IG may be Read's comment about the “youthful brilliance” of the people that were attending the Points of View discussions. One of the stated aims in founding the ICA had been to encourage a younger generation of British artists, and Read in particular seemed to be aware of a committed interest amongst the sort of individuals—artists, architects, critics, and writers—who were attending discussions and events hosted by the ICA. By the end of January 1952, ICA minutes reveal that a group of young members wished to organize lectures for themselves, inviting speakers who were important to them, rather than to the Managing Committee and others of the “parent” generation. They were referred to initially as the “Young Group” by Dorothy Morland, then Assistant Director of the ICA, who facilitated their meetings and defended their independence when necessary within the institution. Such defences were not infrequently necessary. Individuals who became associated with the IG often helped out with exhibitions at the ICA, but there was a feeling that they ought to know their place and not become too ambitious or vocal. For example, when Le Corbusier, visiting London in 1953, made it known he was willing to meet “useful people,” Morland suggested members of the IG, but Read vetoed the idea.

The celebrated first meeting of the IG, attended by Alloway and about a dozen others, featured the sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi who passed a large and disparate collection of images, including advertisements, torn from American popular culture magazines, through an epidiascope. The point was about juxtaposition, randomness, and art connecting with life: no single image mattered; what counted was the whole, although it was not a whole structured with beginning, middle, and end, but was characterized by multi-directional flow. This time-based collage used images of science fact and fiction, car advertisements, robots, food, and other aspects of contemporary American living. Paolozzi did not offer an account of meaning, but allowed the “imageability” to make the impact and convey an aesthetic that could be interpreted as neo-Dada—it was certainly anti-hierarchic and devoid of formal unity. There were two other meetings of the “Young Group,” neither of them as improvisatory and avant-garde as Paolozzi's.