The Ulster Bank Belfast Festival at Queen's has been attracting the world's great performers to these shores and pulling in record audiences for nearly 50 years, but never have times ahead looked so bleak - not just for the festival, but for the arts sector as a whole.

The Belfast Festival at Queen's is the largest and most impressive arts festival on this island; but it is set against a backdrop of public-sector funding cuts that may cause irreparable damage to the already fragile state of arts and cultural provision here.

Sadly, there was no recent golden age for the arts in Northern Ireland. Any and all artistic achievements were won against the grain of public funding.

To bring it down to individual terms, the current public-sector funding for the arts wouldn't cover even the cost per-person, per-year of a couple of tickets to the cinema.

In spite of the negligible public investment, the arts has produced a burgeoning of the creative industries, which now makes a sizeable contribution to the economic wealth of the UK. Here, that means employment for more than 33,000 people, generating £582m annually for the Northern Ireland economy.

In terms of the economy, cultural tourism represents up to 40% of all tourism worldwide and we also benefit. Up to 39% of visitors to Northern Ireland come here for the rich arts legacy we have.

Therefore, the suggestion that the arts may lose up to 20% of funding over the coming four-year budget period is deeply concerning.

Arts organisations are keenly aware that there is only so much that can be expected from public funding and they actively seek support from alternative sources of revenue, including philanthropic giving and the business sector.

However, it is public funding that provides the anchor and enables organisations to lever private sector investment. A reduction in public funding for the arts will not, therefore, be compensated for by increased funding from private sources.

Given the past years of underfunding, it is clear that the arts sector is poorly-equipped to ride out even small budget cuts. The impact of a 20-25% budget reduction would mean the debilitating loss of up to 100 jobs from our 96 core arts organisations, ensuring that up to 210,000 people are without an event or exhibition to attend.

Missing, also, would be 20 new books by local writers, and a significant reduction in the support we can offer, resulting in lost opportunities for artists and a real danger of Northern Ireland becoming a 'no-go' zone for artists.

The arts are not just additional; the arts serve a public purpose as essential as any frontline service. They must, of course, deliver their part in finding appropriate savings and making themselves as effective and efficient as possible.

But, in terms of the overall funding picture, the annual grant received by the Arts Council is the equivalent to the annual underspends of some of the larger Government departments, such as Health (-£16.6m) or Education (-£15.5m) (at year-end 2008/09). In fact, any disproportionate cut to arts funding will have a negligible effect on the overall Northern Ireland budget.

The arts are not immune to the challenges facing the Government, but let any cuts be proportionate to the cut in the Northern Ireland block grant.

It is clear that the quality of our arts, alongside healthcare, justice and education, is one of the measures by which a society is judged a good place to live in and a good place to invest in.