Basic Income | Vote of Confidence

This is a reprint of an article from the March / April 2025 Visual Artists News Sheet

DAY MAGEE DISCUSSES THEIR EXPERIENCE OF THE BASIC INCOME FOR THE ARTS PILOT PROGRAMME WHICH IS SCHEDULED TO END THIS YEAR.

Having now experienced what is possible through BIA – basic security, even dignity – the thought of returning to less is enough for me to question my career path more than ever. While being a working artist teaches you the value of money and time, it also teaches you what society does and does not value. Ideologically, Basic Income has felt like a governmental vote of confidence in a generation of artists, whose contributions to Irish society, culture, and global reputation are being strongly recognised.

A little under three years ago, I hit the jackpot. Thanks to the efforts of the National Campaign for the Arts (ncfa.ie) and the former Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Catherine Martin, the Basic Income for the Arts (BIA) pilot scheme opened for applications in April 2022. I applied, at peace with my threadbare odds. That September however, I opened an email. Of 8206 eligible applicants, 2000 artists and creative workers had been randomly selected, and I, gobsmacked, was one of them.

For three years, come August, selected artists have received €325 a week. Every few months, we have submitted extensive reports of our earnings from our practice, as well as our general financial stability and mental health. An additional 1000 artists, not selected for the payment, formed a parallel control group as part of the scheme, compensated with a fee for their self-reportage. The BIA payment is taxable as self-employed income, and whilst I bemoan the filing process every October as much as anyone, I have taken pride in being able to pay taxes from my work – to meaningfully participate in citizenship via my labour. I have taken my own selection for the scheme as a call to duty to produce the best work I can, in the discipline I have trained in.

In December 2023, the government published the first report of collected data, as part of the longitudinal research that accompanies the scheme.1 The results were unsurprising: artists on BIA were able to invest more time and money in their practice, and their mental health and quality of life improved, compared to the control group. According to the second impact analysis paper, published in May 2024, BIA recipients invest on average €550 more per month in their practice than the control group, on things like equipment, materials, advertising and marketing, workspaces, and work-related travel. 2 Furthermore, BIA recipients are on average 6 % less likely to have felt downhearted or depressed and over 8% less likely to have experienced anxiety, compared to the control group.3

I’ve done my own research; I have witnessed fellow participants use the time afforded by BIA to form thriving creative communities, which double as professional forums, thus demonstrating the wide-ranging benefits beyond the individual. I have watched the careers of parenting artists, queer artists, disabled artists, and artists of colour flourish because of BIA. Artists, who do not ordinarily earn enough from working in the arts, have been able to devote themselves to their practice. For three years, the scheme has enabled me to sustain my practice on its own terms. Planning for the future has become more possible with BIA.

Nonetheless, in August, the scheme is scheduled to end. Will the scheme be extended or expanded to include more artists? At the time of writing, there is no commitment to do either, as per the drafted Programme for Government. Current BIA participants will likely return to the economic precarity that all other artists have had to circumvent in the meantime, without this life-changing security. The arts community is necessarily tightknit in the face of this precarity, and yet we must equally compete against one another within a dense bureaucracy of funding applications, so as to be paid for our labour.

I didn’t have a straightforward trajectory in my career as an artist – indeed, the majority don’t – and resisted art college until my mid-twenties. By then, I’d developed a chronic illness, which deeply impacted my employability. In learning to manage potentially lifelong illness, I chose to dedicate myself to my career within my limitations. The SUSI Grant allowed me to continue investing in and professionalising my practice, along with the time and studio space that art college afforded me. By the time I graduated in 2021, I had exhibited in shows across the island and had staged my first solo show within a year. This was only possible because of the cultural and institutional value that surrounds access to education.

I have often felt my own share of survivor’s guilt in the wake of my own luck. Having now experienced what is possible through BIA – basic security, even dignity – the thought of returning to less is enough for me to question my career path more than ever. While being a working artist teaches you the value of money and time, it also teaches you what society does and does not value. Ideologically, Basic Income has felt like a governmental vote of confidence in a generation of artists, whose contributions to Irish society, culture, and global reputation are being strongly recognised. Sadly, quite a few of the BIA recipients I have spoken to are currently considering administrative jobs in other sectors, to which many of these creative practices may be lost.

Day Magee is an artist, performer, and writer based in Dublin.
@daymagee

1 Doire Ó Cuinn and Nadia Feldkircher, Arts Work Conditions & Perspectives: Statistical Release as part of “A Portrait of the Arts Sector”, Government of Ireland, December 2023.
2 Nadia Feldkircher and Brian O’Donnell, Basic Income for the Arts: Impact Assessment (First year), Government of Ireland, May 2024.
3 Ibid.