Press release
Basic Income for the Arts (BIA) pilot scheme: First payments issue
From Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media
Published on
Last updated on
From Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media
Published on
Last updated on
Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Catherine Martin, said:
“The delivery of the Basic Income for the Arts has been a key priority for me. I am very pleased that payments have now begun and I look forward to seeing the results of the data collection. This pilot scheme will research the impact of a basic income style payment for artists and will inform future government policy on how best to support artists and the arts sector.
Over 9,000 applications were made under the scheme with over 8,200 assessed as eligible and included in a randomised anonymous selection process. The group of 2,000 grant recipients includes representatives from all art forms, age groups, ethnicities and counties.
A basic income for the arts was the number one recommendation of the Arts and Culture Recovery Taskforce, which was set up by Minister Martin in 2020 to examine how the sector could adapt and recover from the unprecedented damage arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. The main objective of the scheme is to address the precarious and financial instability faced by many working in the arts, and to assist the sector recover post-pandemic.
The first tranche of payments to Artists and Creative Arts Workers who have accepted their place on the BIA and completed a baselining survey have been released today. Payments will be backdated to the date of selection of 29 August and recipients will be paid €325 per week for a full 3 years from the selection date. Each recipient was required to complete a baselining survey to provide data on their lives and creative practice before receiving the BIA payment. This data will be compared against the results of future surveys to evaluate the impact of the BIA.
Overall, BIA aims to:
2,000 recipients were randomly selected from the pool of 8,206 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 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:
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. Control Group members will be paid €650 per year to participate in the research. 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.