This is Sam Burnside's personal account of the creation of, the thinking behind and the historical circumstance of The Verbal Arts Centre in Derry City or Londonderry. The subtitle of the book is 'The Verbal Arts, Lifelong learning and Cultural Development in Northern Ireland.' "In this story of a building the narrative is about much more than the putting together of bricks and mortar. At its heart, it is about education and about art, and about the things that underlie these - curiosity, imagination and creativity and the will to invent - the combined energy that powers human progress. In the best sense of the words, it is about the care and culture of man, 'the best economy' of man.