By Joanna Woronkowicz and Doug Noonan
Ireland just put a big idea on the table. Culture Minister Patrick O’Donovan has opened a public consultation on whether to make Basic Income for the Arts (BIA) permanent, with proposals headed to Cabinet before Budget 2026. The pilot has been running since 2022, paying €325 per week to 2,000 artists and creative workers. Crucially, it was built as a research program from day one—less hand-waving, more measurement.
So what have we learned so far? The first-year impact report says recipients spent about eight more hours each week on their creative work than similar artists who didn’t get the payment. They also put more of their own money back into their practice, felt better overall, and had a much easier time covering basics—without any immediate jump in prices for commissions or other market weirdness. In short: more time, more stability, better headspace.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has been running its own wave of guaranteed-income experiments since the pandemic, including several for artists. The designs of these pilots are all different—different payment amounts, different payment schedules, and different types of recipients. As a result, the results aren’t tidy, but that’s the point. Some programs show clear gains in food security and stress reduction; others show little movement on longer-run outcomes. The Baby’s First Years study, for instance, found no statistically significant effects on its preregistered child-development measures at age four, even as families adjusted spending. It’s a reminder that “cash fixes everything” isn’t a serious claim; design and context matter.
Look specifically at artists and you see why cash lands differently. New results from Creatives Rebuild New York (CRNY) show participants shifted a bigger share of their week into arts practice—about 23.1 hours vs. 19.4 for non-participants, or 53% vs. 45% of total work time. That includes paid and unpaid work: making, rehearsing, researching, experimenting. In the arts, the most important work often happens before any check arrives. This lines up neatly with David Throsby’s work-preference model: when artists have a bit more financial breathing room, they don’t work less—they work more on their art. Ireland’s “more time on practice” story rhymes with that.
There’s a practical wrinkle Ireland can’t avoid if BIA goes permanent: who counts as an artist? That’s not an academic quibble; it sets the rules for eligibility and shapes public trust. Our recent work in Cultural Trends shows how definitions—self-identification, job codes, credentials, peer recognition—each pull in different populations, with real consequences for who benefits and who’s left out. CRNY leaned on self-identification plus simple residency and age rules; we then compared applicants to federal data and found big gaps between Census labels and actual creative work. Definition isn’t just packaging. It is the policy.
And yes, there’s criticism of basic income programs for artists that deserves a hearing. George Musgrave argues that while music careers have long relied on various kinds of subsidy, a standing Basic Income for the Arts could be a tough political sell once you reckon with trade-offs, fairness to non-recipients, and tight cultural budgets. You don’t have to buy every point to see the caution light: design for the politics you actually have, not the fantasy version.
So where does that leave Ireland? In a comparatively good spot. The research scaffolding is in place, and the early results track with common sense: reduce income whiplash and artists spend more time making work, invest more in their craft, and feel less squeezed—without immediate signs of price inflation or sectoral overheating. CRNY’s findings point in the same direction: guaranteed income nudges artists toward the unpaid, creative core where future value is built.
But, guaranteed income won’t, by itself, fix a complicated creative economy. It won’t rewrite bad contracts, end gatekeeping, or settle every debate about fairness. Early gains can fade or shift; costs and trade-offs are real. That’s why eligibility and legitimacy matter as much as any chart in a report. Therefore, the live questions now are about staying power—do these gains last?—and about the surrounding system: contracts, pricing power, and who gets counted. Hopefully someone cares enough about these long-term effects to continue funding guaranteed income in the arts research.
What can we learn from the U.S. as Ireland considers permanence? Since 2020, many pilots have improved near-term stability and stress, but impacts on earnings, employment, and other longer-run outcomes are mixed—and sometimes nil. Pair that with CRNY’s stronger time-use story and Throsby’s logic, and the message is clear: don’t ask cash to do everything; aim it where it does the most good—buying time to make work—and judge it against realistic alternatives.
Our advice to Ireland: if BIA moves ahead, keep it simple and honest. Target time volatility, not wage-setting. Pick an amount and payment schedule that fits that goal, and test it against other tools like project grants, portable benefits, organizing supports, or tax changes. Build in sunset and review points. Publish enough data for independent researchers to check who benefits (not just the average) and to watch second-order effects like pricing, contracting norms, and who stays in the field. Funding time may be a smart bet in the arts. It’s still a bet—place it with clear goals, transparent evidence, and a willingness to adjust or walk away if the results don’t hold.