Artists in receipt of the of Government-backed Basic Income for the Arts scheme are getting to spend more time on their work, investing more money in it and reporting significantly greater levels of wellbeing, according to a review of the first year of the project published on Monday. Speaking at the launch of the report and a related conference attended by many artists and other from the sector, Minister for the Arts Catherine Martin said the intention over the course of the three year pilot scheme was to gather “gold standard research,” which, she said, she hoped would amount to “irrefutable evidence” of the scheme’s value to artists, the wider sector and the State. During the pilot, launched in October 2022, some 2,000 artists receive a basic income of about €1,400 per month.
An additional 1,000 artists, also from a wide range of areas including music and the visual arts, are participating in the scheme as a control group without the regular payments. The review finds that those receiving the basic income are significantly more likely to be coping financially; are investing an average of €550 more a month in their work; are spending almost eight additional hours a week – a mix of artistic, research and administrative work – on their endeavours and less likely to be suffering from depression. READ MORE ‘You’re wasting my time’: Audio recording prompts father of autistic boy to complain of emotional abuse at school Higgins ‘lectured us about the atr.