Arts Sector gathers to discuss Status of the Artist in Ireland & results from first year of the Basic Income for the Arts pilot

• report analysing the first year of the Basic Income pilot will be published today
• findings show Basic Income recipients invest €550 a month more on their creative practice and their life satisfaction has increased
• recipients spend 8 hours a week more on their practice and work fewer hours outside the arts
• arts organisations and artists will discuss issues facing artists and the sector with Minister Catherine Martin
• panels will discuss basic income, climate and creativity, health & wellbeing and artists’ spaces
• Minister will invite the sector to input into plans for a new Cultural Policy

Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media Catherine Martin is today hosting a conference for artists and arts sector organisations. The Minister will participate on one of the four discussion panels taking place and will speak about the latest findings into the ground-breaking Basic Income for the Arts pilot scheme. Up to 2,000 artists are in receipt of the payment with up to a further 1,000 participating in the control group who don’t receive the payment but provide the same data as those who do.

Minister Catherine Martin said:

The Impact Assessment (1 Year) of the Basic Income Pilot Scheme published today outlines changes to date that the BIA recipients have experienced within the first year of receiving the payment.

One year into the pilot, research suggests that the BIA payment is having a consistent, positive impact on almost all indicators; positively impacting practice development, sectoral retention, well-being, and lessening deprivation. BIA recipients are spending more time on their art practice per week, less time working in other sectors, are more likely to be able to sustain themselves through arts work alone and are suffering less from depression and anxiety.

Minister Martin continued:

The conference will feature a number of panel discussions which will be centred around Income Supports for Artists, Creative Climate Action, Health and Wellbeing and Making Space for the Arts, a panel hosted by the National Campaign for the Arts (NCFA). The day will also include breakout sessions where artists and other delegates will discuss topics of interest in order to feed into the development of a new culture policy.

The conference will also feature performances by Krea

and Adam Mohamed.

Findings from the report

Recipients are investing more time and more money into their practice.

Each week, BIA recipients spend in total 8 hours more than the control group on their creative practice. This includes:

• +3.5 weekly hours more making work
• +2 weekly hours more on research and experimentation
• +1 hour more on management and administration
• and more than half an hour weekly on training

BIA recipients invest each month €550 more than the control group in their practice, namely on equipment and materials, advertising and marketing, workspaces, and work travel.

BIA recipients are more likely to have completed new works in the previous 6 months. On average they have completed 3.6 pieces of work more than the control group.

BIA recipients spend 2.7 weekly hours less than the control group working in a sector other than the arts.

BIA recipients are less likely than the control group to name “low pay” or “lack of jobs or clients” as reasons for the inability to work in the arts.

BIA recipients make ends meet more easily than the control group and are more likely to afford basic items.

BIA recipients have higher life satisfaction compared to the control group.

BIA recipients are less likely to have felt depressed or anxious compared to the control group.

No impacts have been found on the prevalence of unpaid work in the arts, the price of commissions, the likelihood to apply for arts funding or the prevalence of artistic residencies.

BIA Impact Papers evaluate the impact of the Basic Income for the Arts. Outcomes will be tracked over time for both the Treatment Group (i.e. those in receipt of the BIA) and the Control Group (who are not receiving the BIA). Groups are compared to each other over time, as well as to their initial outcomes at baseline.

Participants in the Basic Income for the Arts pilot scheme are taking part in a three-year research programme (which began in October 2023) to assess the impact of a basic-income-style payment on the arts sector.

Participants were selected using an anonymous randomised selection process. Over 8,000 applicants were deemed eligible under the scheme’s criteria and all eligible applicants were included in the selection process.

Payments of €325 per week are being made to artists and creative arts workers in the Treatment Group over the course of the scheme.

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

To assist with this, a cohort of eligible applicants who were not selected to receive the payment have been participating in a control group to facilitate the evaluation of the pilot.

The research released today uses comparisons in the data received from those receiving the payment and those in the control group, as well as comparing the data with that returned before the payments began.

Conference details

Break-out session topics for conversation and feedback

As part of the Conference, there will be an opportunity for breakout sessions to discuss topics related to the Status of the Artist in Ireland.

Breakout Topics include:

• Artists and Climate Action
• Artists with Disabilities
• Artists working through the Irish language
• Artists’ Workspaces
• Arts Council Paying the Artist policy/Artist Pay
• Cultural Policy Review Priorities
• The role of the artist in Irish Life – ideologically, practically and politically
• Artists as drivers of the night-time economy
• Is the Arts community in Ireland a Welcoming/Safe Space?
• The role artists play in Irish Media
• Freedom of Artistic expression
• Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in the Arts

Biographies for conference

Seán Rocks - Moderator

Seán presents ARENA, the daily arts and culture programme on RTÉ Radio 1. He previously presented daytime strands on RTÉ Lyric FM and won a Silver Medal at the New York Festival of Radio with BBC Radio 4. Seán regularly hosts concerts and major national events and was MC at the State Banquet for the 2011 visit of Queen Elizabeth. He has also worked extensively as an actor at home and abroad, appearing at the Abbey and Gate Theatres and with many important independent companies.

Panel #1 Basic Income and Artists Income Supports Panellists – Minister Catherine Martin, Shafeka Hashash and Toby Dennett

Toby Dennett is Strategic Development Manager at the Arts Council working across areas of research and policy. He led the development of the Arts Council’s Paying the Artist policy. Toby co-chaired a recent EU OMC working group on the Status and working conditions of artists. He originally joined the Arts Council in 2007 as Head of Artists’ Supports and Registrar of Aosdána including management of the Cnuas (a guaranteed income type payment). He was previously the Director of Visual Artists Ireland.

Lisa Fingleton is an artist, writer and grower who has spent over twenty years cultivating deep-rooted connections between art, food and farming. She hosts and co-ordinates projects from The Barna Way, an eco-social arts centre, organic farm and woodland near Ballybunion, Co Kerry. Her projects incorporate socially engaged, collaborative and performative process; participatory moving image; large scale drawing installations; as well as creative writing.

Lisa is currently the Visual Artist in Residence with Kerry County Council Arts Office and the embedded artist with Brilliant Ballybunion a new Creative Climate Action Project managed by Creative Ireland. The project supports the community to be creative, grow food and protect biodiversity, all at the same time.

Maeve Stone

Maeve is a director / writer for film and theatre whose work responds to issues of climate breakdown, and revisits the canon with a feminist lens. She has been working in embedded and socially engaged practice for the last 8 years and is keen to continue learning how the skills of a storyteller can impact climate resilience. In 2021 she co-founded a film and media company called Cracking Light Productions with her partner Alex Gill which is based in Co. Clare. The work focuses on embedded community collaboration and has led to a series of unique projects across the country.

Aidan O’Connor is a vegetable farmer from West Kerry. He participated in the year-long project Corca Dhuibhne Inbhuanaithe – A Creative Imagining. He is Chair of the Maharees Conservation Association and involved in Creative Coastal Resilience a project creatively addressing the challenges faced by the Maharees due to climate change.

Tania Banotti

Tania Banotti is the Director of the Creative Ireland Programme, an all-of-government initiative to place creative arts at the heart of Irish communities. One area of its work is Creative Climate Action, a partnership of three government departments: Culture, Climate Action and the Taoiseach to use the talents of artists and the wider creative sector around climate action. Tania has extensive experience in performing arts, advertising and media. She was Director of Theatre Forum Ireland for 9 years and one of the founders of the NCFA.

www.creativeireland.gov.ie

Adam Mohammad

Adam is an Irish-Sudanese poet / musician / artist from Ballymun, Dublin. He was named as one of Tenth Man's ‘New Year's Revolutionaries,’ an artist they believe will shape Irish culture in the future. His debut piece Untitled, released in December 2020, detailed the complexities of growing up and mixed race and mixed religion while navigating amid working class communities. The piece went viral, gaining over 350k views, was selected as an RTÉ 2FM Track of the Week, and led to interviews and articles with Totally Dublin, RTÉ, and the Irish Examiner. It has also been included on Irish school curriculums at both Junior and Leaving Certificate levels

Nicola Spendlove

Nicola is currently a Creative Communities Engagement Officer by day and a theatre maker by night. She is also a registered and practicing Occupational Therapist who specialises in the therapeutic use of creativity in children with attachment-related sensory issues.

Eoin Morrissey is a Waterford native who has been Healthy City and County Coordinator since September 2022. Eoin’s background is in Community Development, Health & Wellbeing and Teaching. Since taking on the post the initiative has grown to establish itself within the Community section of Waterford City and County Council and across other local authorities.

Ruth Flynn is a Visual Artist and founding member of Outcast Theatre Productions. She has performed in various festivals throughout Europe and works in a variety of media. She works with creative arts as a therapeutic tool with adults and adolescence. Ruth is the creative arts facilitator for Aiséirí addiction treatment centres and GOMA Gallery of Modern Art. In her role with community groups, she has created several murals within the community setting.

Dave Reid

Dave Reid is founder / CEO of Minding Creative Minds. Minding Creative Minds is a support programme for the Irish Creative & Arts sectors. They offer free 24/7 helpline & counselling (including specialist Trauma & Abuse counselling), a comprehensive mentoring programme and regular career clinics, a masterclass series offering 50 specialist and tailored masterclasses for the creative sector every year. Last month they launched our free Creative Art Therapy Service offering which encompasses music / drama / dance therapy.

Gráinne Pollak is a multilingual arts producer and project manager from Dublin. She holds an MA in Arts Administration and Cultural Policy from Goldsmiths, University of London, and has produced new work and international tours for organisations, companies & festivals across Ireland and the UK, including ANU, Landmark Productions, MoLI, Sadler’s Wells Theatre, Rambert, the Gate Theatre, LIFT (London International Festival of Theatre) and Dublin Fringe Festival.

Maria Fleming

Maria is the Chair of the NCFA (National Campaign for the Arts) and CEO of First Fortnight. Maria has more than 20 years of experience working in the arts with Ireland’s leading companies and theatre artists, including Dublin Theatre Festival, The Ark and Druid Theatre Company. She is a passionate social justice campaigner and is a volunteer advocacy champion with the Irish Cancer Society.

Colin McDonnell

Colin is a founding director at SOA and principal at Found Architecture. He studied architecture at UCD and has worked in private practice since 2004, with experience principally in residential, ecological and timber construction. In 2018 he co-founded Self-Organised Architecture Research GLC (SOA), and has since co-designed and led a range of SOA initiatives, including current work on an EU Interreg funded project which will help to establish Cork Community Land Trust.

Aoibhéann McCann

Aoibhéann is an actor, writer and member of the NCFA Steering Group. Some of her most recent screen credits include THE LAST HARVEST, a script she co-wrote with Maeve Stone, HARRY WILD (Acorn); BLUELIGHTS (BBC) ,CLEAN SWEEP (RTE), ELLIS (Channel 5). She will perform her own monologue HUMANITARIAN in Landmark's Theatre-for-1 at the Cork Midsummer Festival. Theatre credits include GIRL ON AN ALTAR and TWINKLETOES (Abbey Theatre); THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD; A STREET CAR NAMED DESIRE, for which she won Best Actress at the Irish Times Theatre Awards 2020 and LEGACY (Droichead Arts Centre), a play she co-wrote with Karis Kelly.