100 reasons to celebrate a Potteries polymath...

"ARTHUR, don't talk so bloody daft. Folks dunner want art round here, it's for the toffs in London. Keep on with it and theyt be a three and sevenpence halfpenny man all thee life.

- Theresa Heskins - Artistic Director, the New Vic Theatre

Arthur Berry did try to follow his dad's advice. But almost by accident he was to become a painter, poet and playwright - one of the Potteries' greatest.

Arthur was born in Smallthorne a century ago. Dad was a colliery bricklayer by day, a publican by night. A teacher spotted Arthur's flair for drawing, helping him onto a course that trained pupils for the potbanks' decorating shops. Arriving at the Burslem School of Art, which to his eyes looked as grand as Buckingham Palace, Arthur's world changed.

Getting a job after junior art school wasn't easy, Arthur thought because of his 'bent and useless right arm, until Doulton's created a device to fix the pottery figure to his workbench. At art night classes three times a week, he discovered the paintings of LS Lowry (he of the matchstalk men and matchstalk cats and dogs), and he realised that the working lives and streets he loved could be the subject of great art. He studied at the Royal College of Art, and later taught there, coming home every night to his beloved Potteries.