An arts-based scheme is helping put local pubs back at the heart of rural communities.

The Inn Crowd project aims to support rural pubs across south-east England and East Anglia by hosting high quality spoken word inspired events.

Run by Creative Arts East in East Anglia, its goal is to reinforce pubs as central to rural community life by bringing exceptional cultural experiences to new audiences.

Creative Arts East teamed up with a number of other organisations to launch the iniaitive.

The partnership project includes Applause with from the Writers' Centre, Norwich; New Writing South; Pub is the Hub and Arts Council England.

It seeks to provide a unique and engaging space for some of the UK's most talented artists and performers.

It has proved popular with landlords looking for new incentives for customers to visit their local pub.

Bringing live performances into village pubs has helped to make hostelries more popular and profitable.

A capacity crowd of 60 people attended a performance of Paradise Lost at the Roebuck Inn, Laughton, East Sussex.

The production has been specially adapted for a pub audience in a one-man staging of Milton’s epic poem condensed into 70 minutes.

Landlord Tony Leonard said: “We’ve been delighted to be involved in this project.

"There aren’t many performance spaces in this area so it is wonderful to meet that need for local people."

Mr Leonard said he was so inspired by the project that he installed temporary theatre staging.

"It’s a great use for our function room," he added.

For further details, visit www.pubisthehub.org.uk.