Minister Martin presents Basic Income for the Arts scheme to UK Performers’ Alliance All-Party Parliamentary Group in Westminster

• Minister today meets with UK Performers’ Alliance All-Party Parliamentary Group to discuss the Basic Income for the Arts Pilot Scheme
• this innovative funding scheme will research the impact of the 2,000 artists and creative arts workers in Ireland will receive €325 per week for three years as part of the research programme
• the research will inform future government policy in the arts sector

Minister Catherine Martin, Irish Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, is in London today to meet with UK parliamentarians and union representatives. Minister Martin has been invited to speak to the Performers’ Alliance All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) in Westminster about the ground-breaking Irish Basic Income for the Arts scheme (BIA), an innovative pilot scheme which has the potential to transform how the arts is funded in Ireland.

The APPG examines issues affecting performers in the arts throughout the UK and minimum income guarantees for performers is an issue the group are currently considering. It was in this context that the APPG invited Minister Martin to speak to about the BIA scheme and any learnings from the Irish pilot that could be useful for the UK.

Minister Martin said:

The scheme was launched in April this year and attracted over 9,000 applications. Payments to the 2,000 recipients began last week and the data collection and research project has begun.

Minister Martin's speech to UK Parliamentary Committee

Overall, the BIA aims to:

• pilot a sector-specific support for the arts, in the form of a basic income, to recognise the value of time spent on creative practice, and for arts workers who make a key contribution to the creative production process
• enable artists and creative arts workers to focus on artistic production/practice without having to enter into employment in other sectors to sustain themselves
• support participants to develop their practice by providing income during periods when practice and portfolio are being developed
• give recognition to the value of the arts and the role of creative practice in Irish society
• minimise the loss of skill and experience from the arts sector
• 2,000 recipients were randomly selected from the pool of over 8,000 eligible applicants. EY were contracted as independent verifiers for the selection process to oversee that selection was both random and anonymous
• participants will receive the payment – set at €325 (£280) per week – paid on a monthly basis

Participants will be required to take part in the research programme, which will require them to collect and share data on a number of topics including, but not limited to, the following:

- Details of time spent on various activities including creative practice, working in the arts, work in other sectors, training, professional development, leisure time

- Income earned from the arts and other sectors including household income

- Demographic data, for example: age, gender, ethnicity, disability status, art form, geographic location

- Wellbeing indicators

• data collected will be anonymised in the evaluation of the scheme and data will be evaluated at an aggregate and not individual level
• as this is a research pilot there is no guarantee that funding will continue after the pilot
• an evaluation of the scheme will be conducted on an ongoing basis to determine the impact of the grant payment
• it was a non-competitive process, therefore once a person satisfied the eligibility criteria they were included in a randomised selection process
• 1,000 unsuccessful but eligible applicants were invited to participate in a control group to facilitate a comprehensive ex post appraisal of the pilot. This will help evaluate the impact of the payment by comparing outcome for those who received the payment with a group of peers who were not paid the basic income over the same period
• similar to most other income the payment will be taxable but the amount of taxation paid will depend on an individual’s personal circumstances
• recipients of the Basic Income are entitled to earn additional income, which will also be reckonable for the purposes of income tax
• eligibility was based on the definition of the arts as contained in the Arts Act 2003; ““arts” means any creative or interpretative expression (whether traditional or contemporary) in whatever form, and includes, in particular, visual arts, theatre, literature, music, dance, opera, film, circus and architecture, and includes any medium when used for those purposes”
• a creative arts worker is someone who has a creative practice and whose creative work makes a key contribution to the production, interpretation or exhibition of the arts