The Brontë shrine is to employ its first person dedicated to championing the museum as a centre for contemporary arts.

The job will be to reveal how the Brontë sisters and the wider story of their family, is an inspiration to 21st century writers and artists.

And to help fund the three-year post, the Brontë Parsonage Museum at Haworth has won a grant from the Esmee Fairburn Foundation.

Brontë Parsonage Museum manager Alan Bentle, said: "The grant has given a significant boost to the groundbreaking work to establish the Parsonage not just as a heritage museum but as a place of excellence for contemporary arts."

The arts programme has been in operation since 2005 and had attracted internationally renowned artists and poets like Cornelia Parker, the poet laureate, Andrew Motion and Paula Rego.

The programme of events for 2007-2008 has already been drawn up and includes Amanda Dalton, who will act as poet in residence to mark National Poetry Day, which will be celebrated at the Parsonage tomorrow.

Best selling author Margaret Drabble, who has written about how landscape has influenced writers like the Brontës, will come to Haworth on Wednesday, November 28.

She will be reading her work and discussing the influence of the Brontes.

Joining her will be poetry award winner Wendy Cope who will be discussing her Whitbread poetry award poem If I Don't Know."

Novelist and prize winning writer, Tamar Yellin, who lives in Stanbury, will speak about being a jew in Bronteland, on Wednesday October 17.