Comment: Why we must still invest in the obscure

This week the Arts Council cut funding for 206 arts organisations. Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt says that they had to take a "share of the pain" in tackling the deficit, although the reduction in funding was 15 per cent lower than the 19 per cent across other government departments.

Apart from meaning there will be increased competition for waiters' jobs it may not really impact all that much on society. The average person goes to the cinema, stand-up or a musical but would rarely visit the theatre and would give ballet or opera a birth as wide as the fat lady. Surely successful art is funded by the ticket sales and commercial sponsors? If it's any good people will attend and companies will want to be associated with it. Also if it's really unpopular who decides how much money it should receive? Presumably it is someone whose taste is considered inherently better than the average philistine who votes with their wallet and doesn't buy a ticket.

Of the 1,330 organisations that had applied for funding for 2012-15, 638 were disappointed. One of the unlucky ones was The Poetry Book Society - established by TS Eliot in 1953 "to propagate the art of poetry." The poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, called the cuts "a national shame and a scandal". She added: "This news goes beyond shocking and touches the realms of the disgusting." Why? I stopped reading poetry the moment it wasn't compulsory to do so.

Is it really so awful that a dance group called The Cholmondeleys & The Featherstonehaughs has had its funding cut? Contemporary dance always seems like a form of self expression, like singing in the shower, that people in black leotards have managed to somehow inflict on other people. It may be the kindest thing to do to put these misguided prancers out of their misery...Or perhaps not.

Popularity doesn't make something inherently good, that would make McDonalds the best restaurant in the world instead of the only remaining public toilet in city centers; The Sun would be the best British newspaper rather than a sometimes entertaining scandal sheet containing little approximating to actual news; the most popular thing on the Web aside from social media is porn, does that make it the most worthwhile?

British arts funding has traditionally relied on a mixture of public and private cash. This model continues to help us take risks that we wouldn't otherwise be able to entertain, National Theatre artistic director, Sir Nicholas Hytner says: "The National Theatre's production of War Horse, which is generating a great deal of revenue for both us and the private sector, would have been impossible without sustained investment allowing us to create it over the course of 18 months of workshops." War Horse is now being turned into a Hollywood film by Steven Spielberg, which will generate a profit for UK Plc.

According to a manifesto produced by an organisation called the Cultural Capital, that campaigns for arts funding, Britain has five of the 20 most visited museums in the world (more than France or the US), which help to contribute about £1.5bn per annum to our economy, with music chipping in £5bn and theatre £2.6bn. This dwarfs the funding received from the Arts Council which is around £950m.

Arts funding increased due to the much maligned John Major, who set up the National Lottery which turbo boosted Britain to artistic poll position and has generated billions for the exchequer. While we may not get modern dance, investing in the obscure is the only way to uncover and nurture new talent and the next cash cow or War Horse.