Ireland to offer a weekly basic income to artists and creatives

17 September 2022

The Irish government will pay two thousand artists and creative arts workers a basic income of three hundred and twenty-five Euros (about four hundred and eighty Australian dollars) per week, as part of a trial being conducted over the next three years.

The Basic Income for the Arts pilot scheme will examine, over a 3 year period, the impact of a basic income on artists and creative arts workers. Payments of €325 per week will be made to 2,000 eligible artists and creative arts workers who will be selected at random and invited to take part.

This is the sort of initiative that’s needed in Australia, where artists and writers seldom earn more than fifty-thousand dollars a year — likely well below that for many — compared to the average annual salary of about ninety-thousand dollars for other workers.