Ireland is now paying artists a basic income. Will the idea catch on? - Positive News

Ireland is now paying artists a basic income. Will the idea catch on?

Ireland’s basic income for artists has been made permanent after research showed that it boosted the economy. Other nations have similar schemes. With more homegrown artists now coming from privileged backgrounds and AI disrupting the creative industries, there are calls for the UK to follow suit

Words by

Gavin Haines

June 17, 2026

Arts<br>Economics<br>Money

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Ireland’s basic income for artists has been made permanent after research showed that it boosted the economy. Other nations have similar schemes. With more homegrown artists now coming from privileged backgrounds and AI disrupting the creative industries, there are calls for the UK to follow suit

On the first weekend of July last year, Britain’s flatlining economy got a boost from two unlikely sources: heavy metal pioneers Black Sabbath and Britpop heroes Oasis. Who said rock ’n’ roll was dead?

Leaving aside for a moment the cultural significance of these iconic bands reuniting, there was an impact that could be measured in cold, hard economics.

Estimates suggest that Sabbath’s farewell gig in Birmingham – a city that has cut its arts budget to zero – injected £20m into the local economy. Meanwhile, the UK leg of Oasis’ tour, which kicked off in Cardiff the same weekend, provided a £1bn shot in the arm to the nation’s economy. Not bad for two bands whose members were on the dole before achieving rock star status.

For working-class creatives, music has long been an escape from hard lives. Less so these days. The record industry that propelled the likes of Sabbath and Oasis to fame is unrecognisable today. The collapse in physical record sales in the free-for-all streaming age has gutted the sector, leaving musicians struggling to make a living.

The loss of grassroots music venues – a third have closed in the UK over the last 20 years – has compounded the issue. Cuts to arts budgets have been similarly devastating, while the rise of generative AI poses further headaches for creatives of all stripes, not just musicians – and all that amid a cost of living crisis.

According to the charity Arts Emergency, such headwinds are having a disproportionate effect on working-class, disabled and minority ethnic artists, who have long been underrepresented in UK culture.

“It’s a time of great precarity for the cultural sector and society in general,” says Neil Griffiths, CEO of Arts Emergency. “Imagination and creation are products of time and space, but there isn’t the time and space anymore. Society is unequal, while culture is undervalued and underfunded.”

As a result, often only the privileged have time to create. “Just one in 10 people who work in culture in the UK are from a working-class background,” says Griffiths.

Artist Tobias Prytz is a beneficiary of Norway's model for supporting artists, receiving around 330,000 NOK (£25,600) per year

For a country that glorifies Winston Churchill, the UK appears to have missed his memo on culture: “The arts are essential to any complete national life,” he said in a 1953 speech. “The nation owes it to itself to sustain and encourage them.”

Other nations recognise as much. In 2022, the Irish government trialled a first-of-its-kind basic income for artists to kickstart culture as the country emerged from the pandemic.

Offering participants a weekly stipend of €325 (£283), the €25m (£21m) pilot helped more than 2,000 artists. According to a study published last year, the scheme generated €100m (£87m) in “social and economic benefits” to Ireland’s economy, meaning it more than paid for itself.

Buoyed by the data, the Irish government made the scheme permanent in February. In the long history of basic income trials, it’s the first to become permanent.

Multimedia artist Elinor O’Donovan, from Cork, is among the 2,000 creatives to have benefitted from the scheme (though at the time of going to press she was unsure whether she would re-qualify).

Imagination and creation are products of time and space but there isn’t the time and space anymore

“I don’t want to sell this idea that artists are special creatures, or whatever, but to be able to do creative work, you need time and space to think, and often that kind of creative thinking is quite difficult,” says O’Donovan.

“Before I got [the income], I worked part-time as a receptionist just to be able to afford to pay my rent. Now I work full-time as an artist. The basic income has given me the flexibility that being an artist requires.”

The income, says O’Donovan, enabled her to experiment.

“It’s allowed me to take risks that I wouldn’t have taken otherwise. My work is better and more ambitious. I made a film for the first time and now filmmaking is a big part of what I do. Having the extra income meant that I was able to pay other people to work with me on my film.

The Irish scheme is not without...