cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/46478336
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Unions and experts are increasingly warning that many are struggling to make a living in the arts sector due to low pay, patchy work and the high cost of living.
One potential solution now being looked into in Scotland is for the government to pay artists directly - a so-called basic income for the arts.
The idea comes from Ireland, where a no-strings-attached scheme paying 1,300 euro per month (about £1,134) to some musicians and artists was recently made permanent.
Leading Scottish artists and music industry figures - including the national poet and the head of Celtic Connections festival - are calling on the Scottish government to introduce a similar scheme or risk a cultural “desert”.
Culture Secretary Angus Robertson told the BBC he’s “looking into it”.
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Ireland introduced the ‘Basic Income for the Arts’ pilot scheme in the aftermath of Covid-19 in 2022.
The trial saw 2,000 individual artists - musicians, painters, comedians, poets and others - drawn from a lottery system to take part in the experimental arts funding scheme.
Brían Ó Súilleabháin quit his day job in a wine and spirits shop when he found out he was one of the lucky 2,000, now able to take a risk on acting work.
“It was life-changing,” the actor, 29, says.
"Without the Basic Income, I would have had to go back to the day job, but because I had the Basic Income, I didn’t have to do that.
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Do it for everyone. But artists are a good place to start.
Yes,of course.
Everyone should get a basic income. If we create a world where you cannot hunt and gather for sustenance and it’s all money all the time then of course the three basics should be free (food, shelter, warmth).
It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural, uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to he, the common property of the human race. In that state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with the rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal.
But the earth in its natural state, as before said, is capable of supporting but a small number of inhabitants compared with what it is capable of doing in a cultivated state. And as it is impossible to separate the improvement made by cultivation from the earth itself, upon which that improvement is made, the idea of landed property arose from that inseparable connection; but it is nevertheless true, that it is the value of the improvement, only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property.
Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes to the community a ground-rent (for I know of no better term to express the idea) for the land which he holds; and it is from this ground-rent that the fund proposed in this plan is to issue.
— Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice
Those old guys knew the score.
Hmmm.
Yes but with conditions?
Part of their art is public (so like, installed in public places- city/town halls, parks. Libraries.)
This might look like just paying commissions.
Just spit balling here.
And we’d need to talk about some practical limits of who is an artist. All I know, is that there are artists, and then there are people who think they are. And then there’s the genuinely offensive people, and the people getting rejected because of pearl clutching.
It’s art whenever the creator intended it (the piece) to be art. That’s what we learned in college(I went to an “arts” school).
Better parameters will be required 🙂
The article doesn’t really go into detail about this, but what’s the criteria to be considered an artist? If they extend this program, what’s the cutoff?
Eligibility criteria for the Irish version have not yet been announced, so at this point it’d just be speculation.
The Irish version is already happening. However not everyone will get it.
Sure, might be a good pilot scheme for work that is societally enriching, but not necessarily profitable.
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssssssssssssssssss.
I’m all for whatever redistributes wealth from the rich to the poor.
Here in the US we call it Only Fans.
No without tons of conditions.
