Ireland’s Basic Income for the Arts pilot gets underway

The Irish Government has chosen 2,000 artists and creative arts workers to participate in its Basic Income for the Arts pilot scheme.

The chosen creatives will each receive €325 per week over the three year research programme, to assess the impact of a basic-income style payment on the arts sector.

Over 9,000 applications were made to the scheme, with over 8,200 assessed as eligible and included in a randomised anonymous selection process. 

The selected group of 2,000 includes 707 visual artists, 584 musicians, 204 artists working in film, 184 writers, 173 actors and artists working in theatre, 32 dancers and choreographers, 13 circus artists and 10 architects. 

Of those selected, 84% identified as practising artists, 9% identified as Creative Arts Workers and 7% as Recently Trained Applicants, with 3% working through the Irish language.

Participants will be required to engage in an ongoing data collection programme to assess the impact of a basic income style payment on artists and their creative practice. 

From those who were not selected to receive the payment, 1,000 were selected to participate in a control group to facilitate the evaluation of the pilot.

A basic income for the arts was the top recommendation from the Irish Government's Arts and Culture Recovery Taskforce report, which examined how the sector could adapt and recover from the pandemic.

Ireland’s Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and the Media Catherine Martin called the scheme the pilot scheme “a once-in-a-generation initiative”.

“It makes a strong statement about the value Ireland places on the arts and artistic practice, both for its intrinsic value and in terms of our personal and collective wellbeing, and also in terms of its importance to our identity and cultural distinctiveness on the global stage.”