Basic income scheme unveiled to support artists: ‘This means the world’

Finally, a happy day for the arts community. After five years of campaigning, researching and planning, a bold new pilot scheme to support artists and creative arts workers is open, with applications from next week.

Participants will be selected randomly, while maintaining geographical, gender and artform balance, and a control group of 1,000 eligible but unsuccessful applicants will inform the research. Basic income for the lucky 2,000 will be taxable but not means tested. There will be devil in the detail, including who is eligible.

The announcement was made at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin where the big political guns – not one but three of them: Taoiseach, Tánaiste, and Minister for Arts lined up to trumpet the groundbreaking scheme. They were joined by Claire Duignan, chairwoman of the arts and culture recovery taskforce, whose unanimous, number-one recommendation for post-pandemic recovery and sustainability of the sector was this basic income pilot, she tells us.

Micheál Martin put it in the context of key past policy decisions such as the Arts Council formation and establishing tax concessions for artists. “We need to invest in what sustains us.”

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Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said “Catherine is a fierce advocate for arts and culture and worked tirelessly over the past two years” for this, adding it “wouldn’t be happening if it wasn’t for you”.

Talking about how we leaned on culture for support during recent dark days, he said Tolü Makay’s “slow, articulate haunting rendition” of the Sawdoctors’ N17 was “very much the song of the pandemic for me”. He recalled watching Normal People and “even those Friday nights in watching the Late Late Show”, which he said jokingly “is something I never did before, and don’t ever want to do again, but it was definitely a lifeline”.

Intrinsic value

Predicting other countries will be watching the Irish experiment with interest, Catherine Martin said “what we’re proposing to do in Ireland goes further than any other support I know of internationally”. It was being introduced “not as a social protection support but in recognition of the intrinsic value of artists’ practice, allowing them to focus on their work and be compensated for it”.

There was amhrán and filíocht – though no damhsa – at the launch. Spoken word performer Stephen James Smith had a poem about St Brigid, while Tosin Bankole and Louis Younge of the eight-piece funk-soul band Toshín had a song about women’s empowerment.

“I believe getting a basic income I can be the best version of myself in my music, and thank you so much for doing this for us,” Bankole said. “This means the world. I feel like the last two years I’ve been struggling, working in a restaurant and, like, I just want to make music so bad, and I have to go to work and then go home and write music, and this is making my dreams come true. Thank you.”

Out of bad times, good changes can flow, and this looks like one of them.