Skegness braced for backlash after graffiti campaign in battle of resorts The posters were not so objectionable at first glance: photographs of Blackpool and Brighton beneath fierce blue skies, the kind of summer weather the nation's seaside resorts might be craving. It was only upon closer inspection they revealed something less desirable: glimpses of Blackpool Tower and Brighton's famous Promenade obscured by walls scrawled with graffiti. Over the image, a slogan: "For sights you'll want to remember - visit Skegness." East Lindsey council's campaign - to promote its upcoming SO Arts Festival - has sparked a furore since it launched last week. Posters in rival resorts raised hackles while local papers pulled planned ad spots. The battle raged across print, TV and radio; online discussions grew heated. The president of Stay Blackpool wondered at the sourness and labelled it a dirty tricks campaign. "We really weren't trying to upset Blackpool or Brighton, and we did warn them in advance," said James Gilbert, communications manager for East Lindsey. The idea was to give us a platform to discuss the seaside towns of the country, and for them to have an opportunity to promote their towns too. Gilbert has been heartened by the campaign's success. It was even a question on the Million Pound Drop the other night. It was, he said, "a Marmite campaign, but we've had more praise than complaints, and for a small amount of money we've generated millions of pounds' worth of publicity for our coast. And not just our coast - it has raised the profile of all British seaside towns. In an Olympic year, are doing their utmost to coax tourists out of the capital - and to encourage a nation smitten with cheap foreign travel to holiday on home soil. Some resorts have managed this reinvention - Brighton thrives thanks, in part, to proximity to London, its student population and reputation for unbridled fun. Parts of Cornwall, Norfolk, Suffolk and Kent have become bijou hotspots, combining boutique hotels, locally sourced produce and retro fish and chip bars, allowing visitors to bask in a rosy, Cath Kidston-ed image of the seaside. Whitstable has become a feted culinary destination, with Michelin-starred restaurants, breweries and an oyster festival. Margate has been hoping to effect a similar transition - on a recent rain-speckled Sunday afternoon, many of the town's more traditional shops and cafes stood closed, but visitors milled around the Tracey Emin show at Turner Contemporary, and one chi-chi quarter of the town hummed with vintage stores, antique shops, cafes offering cupcakes, and a microbrewery pub promising dressed crab and best mackerel. Reinventing Blackpool and Skegness is arguably a taller order. Traditionally, these towns were the destination of Wakes weeks, the factory holidays that saw workers in the industrial north and Midlands spill towards the coast. These towns have retained their reputation as working class destinations, and the aim now is to broaden their appeal, to draw more money and major cultural events. Still, Blackpool attracts an impressive 13 million visitors each year, and is scheduled for a £220m revamp of its town centre, while just along the coast, Morecambe has picked up the bourgeois baton with boutique bed and breakfast accommodation and the refurbished art deco Midland Hotel. Skegness attracts four million visitors a year, to a town with a population of 21,000 people, bringing some £450m-worth of trade. As it seeks new visitors, it will have to be sure to retain its loyal clientele - families who return each year. Key to the regeneration of Skegness is investment in the arts. In 2009, the district council introduced SO Festival, brainchild of council leader Doreen Stephenson. "She wanted to push Skegness as a town known for something more than donkeys and doughnuts," said Stephanie Tod, PR manager for the festival. From a two-day event, SO Festival has become "a week-long celebration of arts and culture" that this year will encompass the arrival of the Olympic torch on 27 June and a carnival parade named Follow the Light. "The idea is to evoke the spirit of joy which is supposed to be felt in Skegness," said Tod. There will be art installations and work by local artists focused around the town's Tower Gardens, as well as concerts by Scouting For Girls and Adam Ant. There will be music, opera, dance and so many things that people can participate in. Last Sunday, Skegness sat under sporadic sunshine and occasional bluster. The railway station forecourt - recently revamped at a cost of £720,000, with sculptures, saplings and seating areas - stood as a pocket of calm before the bustle of the town began. But the street running towards the seafront remained much as it has for several years, crammed with discount stores, tattoo parlours and fish and chip restaurants. Holidaying families meandered from shop to shop, ice creams in hand, pausing to take in the greyhounds milling before the dog rescue kiosk, the living statue, and the Skegness Fellowship of Christian Churches mobile display with its Wurlitzer music. On the front, there was the straggle of amusement arcades, fairground, Yates's Wine Lodge and Embassy theatre. Dave Marsh, 45, from Huddersfield, who has visited Skegness with his family for the last four years, was contemplating a round of crazy golf. "I used to come here when I was a lad," he said. It's special to me in that way. He agreed a carnival "sounds good, for the kids. But we come here for the traditional British seaside. Candy floss, fish and chips, building sandcastles. Not everyone was oblivious to the changes in Skegness. "The bit down here by the beach is looking smarter," noted Eileen Connolly, 72, another annual visitor from Yorkshire. They've spruced it up. But although the foreshore has had £607,000 of improvements including replanting and reconfiguring flowerbeds and the repainting of street furniture, "some of the town looks tatty now," she said sadly. But so many towns all over look tatty these days. It's all charity shops and closing down sales isn't it? It's the recession. And those big shopping centres. I miss the elegance places used to have. Gilbert said the transformation of Skegness is not about infrastructure. "It's about events," he said. We have what we call a tourism carousel, where people are employed over the summer season, but we have a lot of unemployment in the winter months. Sport will play a substantial role - in November, for instance, the beach will host a motorcycle racing event, on what would normally be an empty stretch of sand. Last year's SO Festival cost £200,000 to put on and brought in £1.2m; this year, they want £1.5m. "The idea is for culture to broaden the tourism economy in Skegness," he addedid, "so it's not just a place for summer holidays."There will be a mingling of high and low culture - while the coming weeks promise Joe Longthorne and the Chuckle Brothers, last Sunday the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra played at the Embassy theatre. "One of the best orchestras in Europe making their British debut in Skegness," Gilbert said, with satisfaction. And next week, in the SO Festival, there will be Bicycle Ballet, street theatre, Swedish stencil art, and Garsington Opera will perform Offenbach's La Perichole, to be broadcast via a large screen on the town's central beach. "We're trying to be a major cultural destination," Gilbert says. We're challenging the idea of the traditional seaside town.