English to German Art/Literary Idioms / Maxims / Sayings

Die Bedeutung ist klar: "Water on dry land" etwas, was dringend benötigt wird. Aber fällt jemandem ein entsprechendes Sprichwort ein?

Hier der gesamte Abschnitt:

Art to preserve the complexity of a society
Well, this is my grand statement on why it is such good news that XXX Stiftung has appeared as a key actor in the region. I am not going to say anything new about arts and culture – I am an aficionado of art. At the YYY Foundation we established an arts and culture programme which was very important historically because it allowed lots of artists to remain in the country and to continue their work, rather than travelling and escaping and going to Los Angeles, or any other place, to wash dishes. I believe that art is basically a way to preserve the complexity of a society by allowing those artists to continue their work who were supported by the state in some strange, perverse way under communism … Think of the memorable title of Miklos Haraszti book “The Velvet Prison”. I think anything that we do in this area will be **water on dry land**.