IT was one of the defining images of the Ukrainian resistance to Russian terror.

In June, the beleaguered city of Odessa reopened its opera house for the first time since the invasion to host a grand concert. With a bill featuring Puccini, Rossini, Verdi and Bizet, among others, the evening was dedicated to the Ukrainian Army. Tickets – which sold out almost instantly – were limited to 250 so that, in the event of attack, the audience could take refuge in the basement bomb shelter.

Those who flocked to the doors dressed in their finery: designer tuxedos and gowns, high heels, sparkling jewellery, teetering hairdos. What mattered, however, was not their attire but the spirit of the event. Despite being in the midst of war, not knowing if any of them – singers, orchestra, backstage staff or audience – would be alive the following week, they headed out as if opera was the answer to their prayers.

The theatre, barricaded with sandbags and anti-tank hedgehogs, has in the past hosted such luminaries as Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov, Enrico Caruso and Isadora Duncan. But it had never seen anything like this. I defy anyone to watch footage of the rapturous response to the performance without a tear coming to their eye.

Nothing speaks louder of the importance of music – of all the arts – even in the most calamitous of times. Perhaps, indeed, the darker the hour, the greater the need. As one of the audience at the Odessa opera said, “we need our music to win”.

That unforgettable event came to mind when reading that support from Creative Scotland for the arts is predicted to be cut next year, and fewer companies given long-term funding. The decrease in CS’s budget will not be known until next month but, with Holyrood’s need to pare the finances drastically across the board, it would be a miracle if it emerged unscathed when lumps will be knocked out of every other compartment of the public purse.

News from south of the Border does not inspire confidence. Last week, Arts Council England delivered a devastating blow to some of the country’s most reputable companies. Donmar Warehouse, one of the most adventurous and respected theatres in London, has had all state funding removed, as part of the Arts Council’s commitment to the Government’s levelling-up programme – ie, moving the headquarters of arts companies out of London and into the shires.

English National Opera has likewise had its funding removed, although it has been allocated £17m to come up with a business plan for reinventing itself, possibly in Manchester. Other leading names, such as the Serpentine Galleries, have suffered swingeing cuts and must be reeling.

Although state funding for the arts in Scotland is not dictated by such a draconian and short-sighted policy, what’s happening in England feels like a harbinger of hard times ahead for all creative institutions that are not deemed the bread and butter of everyday life. Why worry if a performance of The Nutcracker is cancelled, or a much-loved theatre is forced to close, when it’s not just the unemployed but those with jobs who are resorting to food banks?

I don’t envy those charged with keeping the nation’s accounts in order. When faced with a stark choice between supporting something that is literally lifesaving – hospital equipment or care homes, for instance – rather than a library, orchestra or ballet corps, nobody could dispute that the urgent priority must be health. Taken too far, however, that argument becomes self-defeating.

How is health defined, and what helps to keep people healthy? In an age when mental wellbeing is of increasing concern, surely the argument for a thriving arts sector ought to be self-evident. The only glimmer of light in an otherwise gloomy scenario is that libraries, usually the first to be scythed, now hold a useful dual function: priceless repositories of free books and information, but also warm hubs in a cold climate.

At what point do the intangible but unarguable benefits of music, art, dance, books or films begin to be recognised as an essential part of a thriving, multi-dimensional economy? When will they finally be accorded the status of a non-negotiable and vital cog in the wheels of commerce as well as of the mind?

When the Director of the National Galleries of Scotland admits that he is budgeting simply to keep the doors open, hinting at reducing opening hours to make ends meet, it’s a sign of how grim the situation has become. With other museums and galleries following suit, there’s little doubt that the present dire financial landscape will be looked back on as the harshest period of British economic history in living memory, barring only the Great Depression.

When news broke that, after ceasing trading, Edinburgh Filmhouse and the Edinburgh International Film Festival might have found a saviour, there was cautious rejoicing. The festival’s former artistic director Mark Cousins recalled an experience similar to that in Odessa: “Cultural organisations aren’t just fair-weather friends. I found this when I took the Edinburgh International Film Festival to Sarajevo in 1994 during its siege. Even as the city was shelled, people still wanted movies, entertainment, imagination and windows on other worlds. They needed bread but they wanted roses too.”

It goes without saying that, even without impending funding cuts, the income of various bodies remains precarious, because audiences are not what they were. At several book festivals this year, I’ve heard organisers bemoaning lower numbers than before the pandemic, as fear of contagion keeps people at home. This trend was confirmed by a couple of friends who emailed recently to say they were sorry not to attend an event I was doing, “but we’re just so damned scared of Covid”.

And then there’s the cost of living, which on its own would be ogre enough. Faced with escalating household bills, what theatregoer, music lover or dance aficionado is as eager now to shell out on tickets?

Yet on that front, maybe we’ll be pleasantly surprised. Is it possible that, precisely because of the all-pervasive mood of anxiety, more people will turn to the arts for uplift and consolation than the bean counters expect? We will see. What I do know is that, if we don’t need the arts to win a war, exactly, we certainly need them – more than ever – to help get us through these miserable times.

Read more by Rosemary Goring:

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