The muted feel-good bluster of the ‘modest uplifts’ trumpeted in the past two years – a drop in the ocean £500,000 each time – fails to disguise, let alone rectify, a brute reality: a fall of 66% in public spending on the region’s arts since 2009–10.

That vertiginous figure, from the State of the Arts report produced last year by the UK pressure group, Campaign for the Arts, becomes even more alarming when compared to the other ‘national regions’. Over the same period, arts spend in Wales reduced by a quarter, in Scotland by 22% and in England by 18%.