Burslem is a market town in the northern half of Stoke-on-Trent. While the nearby city-centre, Hanley, forms the cultural consumption quarter, Burslem is starting to look like the fledgling arts/media production quarter of Stoke. This is because Burslem currently has...

• the Burslem School of Art - the location of professional creatives since the 13th century. Now refurbished at a cost of £1.2m and offering studios, galleries & teaching. Plus a new full-time Arts Development Officer in 2002 + new Business Innovation Centre (free net workstations and phones for start-ups)

• The £580,000 North Staffordshire Urban Design Centre, to be launched September 2003, is to be located in the Burslem School of Art.

• Stoke F.E. College & 6th Form Centre. This is the largest College in England, and the large Burslem campus is the College's main arts & media teaching centre. The very well equipped Media & Drama Dept. has recently doubled the number of teachers to cope with demand.

• a large commercial photographic print lab

• four well-established youth theatre groups

• a thriving monthly Folk Music Club and History Club

• several small publishers, a press agency, a marketing agency, and a monthly community magazine

• an annual arts festival as part of the Burslem Carnival & Festival

• many large famous commercial potteries also produce art ceramics in the town; such as Burleigh, Lorna Bailey, Moorcroft, Wade, Royal Stafford, and others - supported by attractions such as the main Royal Doulton factory-tour and visitor-centre. The elegant family-run George Hotel (AA & RAC three-star) offers tourists comfortable overnight in the heart of Burslem.

• the thriving new Ceramica flagship; a £3-million ceramics gallery & expo in the old Town Hall.

• the Frontline Dance company, which runs education projects bringing together disabled and non-disabled dancers

• a thriving specialist real-ale brewery, Titanic, and a cluster of authentic town-centre pubs set among a classic historic townscape. The town centre still remains much as it was described in the classic novels of Arnold Bennett.

• a fledgling un-subsidised cluster of commercial design-based start-up businesses - such as jellifish, Lesley Burney, Origin Studios, Jackie Harold, Purple Antz, Mould Art, and Anigma New Media

• The fine Wedgwood Institute building, opposite the School of Art; currently the town library, the upstairs could be converted into a creative-cluster of affordable workshops and studios.

• The Council has approved a commercial plan to open the old Queens Theatre in Burslem as a 1000-seat concert venue and theatre by September 2003. Refurbishment is now nearly complete, and its opening could raise the possibility for co-locating some music-production facilities in Burslem.

• £2.4 million for small live-work units for arts & crafts are one of the things the new Regeneration Company are planning for Burslem. Also £1.7 million to refurbish the Indoor Market for a ceramics, arts & crafts markets. There is the possibility that wi-fi nodes for a local wide-band wireless network could be installed in Burslem town centre, to serve the live-work studios cluster.

  Working against market forces to shoe-horn creative production into Hanley instead of Burslem could be the wrong move; mainly because, in the words of creative industries expert Richard Florida...

  "If there is one thing we have learned in our focus groups with knowledge workers, it is the one thing they don't want is a massive nightlife scene soaked in booze."

Burslem's big successes, so far:


The Burslem School of Art - refurbished and open


The Queens Theatre - being refurbished, open Sept 2003


Ceramica - open and thriving

Burslem Masterplan; delivered, June 2003.