Great Yarmouth gets £20,000 to improve cultural assets

The grant is intended to help the council manage its cultural assets more effectively

A seaside town has been given a grant of £20,000 to help boost its cultural and artistic assets, such as theatres.

Arts Council England has given the money to Great Yarmouth Borough Council to fund what it calls an "independent cultural asset study".

The Norfolk resort saw street artist Banksy visit last year, and the BBC Concert Orchestra is taking up a three-year residency in the town.

The council said the money would help to accurately map its culture sector.

The scheme is intended to help the town capitalise on its growing reputation as a centre for artistic innovation, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

A Banksy artwork was created on Admiralty Road in Great Yarmouth, and he also visited Gorleston in the borough

The council hoped that the findings would allow it to "create a dynamic digital resource that maps the sector by mapping cultural, economic and brand potential and providing a clear remit for council investment in arts and culture".

Graham Plant, the Conservative chairman of the council, said: "Over the last two years, these people [involved in the arts] haven't had an income, they haven't been able to go out there and raise anything, they haven't been able to do anything - and we haven't been able therefore to monitor what it is that they're doing."

A report presented to councillors stated that Great Yarmouth "has fairly rapidly become the centre of a series of high level funding successes, bids and national interest".

These included the Banksy mural in Admiralty Road, showing three people on top of a bus shelter - two dancing and another playing an accordion - and a model the artist added to Merrivale Model Village, of a miniature stable, which has since sold for £1m at auction.

Elsewhere in the council district, he painted a mural of a arcade grabber game on the seafront in neighbouring Gorleston,