Alloway's article on Dada joined his writings on science fiction, Charles Eames and the This Is Tomorrow catalogue in outlining his continuum model for culture in 1956. His employment of the term “continuum” predates This Is Tomorrow and was already in currency in IG circles. Indeed, Alloway's notes for his “Human Image” lecture in the “Aesthetic Problems of Contemporary Art” sessions at the ICA a year earlier refers to the “Fine popular arts continuum [that] now exists.” No single text provided a definitive definition of the continuum model but, in the later 1950s, Alloway wrote three essays—one each in 1957, 1958, and 1959—that emphasize different aspects of the model—its politics, critical standards, and differentiated consumers.

In Ark, the journal of the Royal College of Art, Alloway proclaimed his 750-word “Personal Statement” in 1957. There are two aspects of his formative years that he felt were crucial to the development of his ideas. First, he explains the role of the mass media for his generation: “We grew up with the mass media. Unlike our parents and teachers we did not experience the impact of the movies, the radio, the illustrated magazines. The mass media were established as a natural environment by the time we could see them.” Second,

The combination of these two elements accelerated in the 1950s. The dissatisfaction with Formalist aesthetics was “hastened for me by the discovery of Action Painting which showed that art was possible without the usual elaborate conventions.” And “The popular arts reached, soon after the War, a new level of skill and imagination.” It was never a question of popular culture replacing fine art in Alloway's life, but of popular culture displacing fine art.