Covid-19, cultural policy and the Irish arts sector: continuum or conjuncture?

ABSTRACT

One of the sectors most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, in Ireland as elsewhere, was the subsidised arts sector. In this article we examine one key aspect of this situation: the supports for artists. Specifically, we consider whether these supports are consistent with pre-pandemic policies in Ireland. We offer an overview of both the impact and responses to COVID-19 on the sector, and the historical narratives within Irish arts policy that informed those responses. In considering the range of instrumental policy developments within the Irish state and their relationship with the status of the artist, we question whether the introduction of the Basic Income for Artists (BIA) scheme constitutes a change or a continuum in policies articulating the relationship between the state and the arts. Using Hall’s idea of conjuncture as a tool for analysis, we argue that the different social, political, economic, and ideological contradictions brought together by COVID-19 have resulted in a strategic policy focus on the ambiguous category of “the artist” and that a number of the policy contradictions that the BIA scheme attempts to resolve are of no intrinsic concern to artists.

KEYWORDS:

• Covid-19 pandemic
• cultural policy
• precarity
• creativity
• Basic Income for the Arts
• conjuncture

Introduction

It is commonly said that “the arts cannot exist commercially,” but that is only true if you define “the arts” as being those things which are in need of subsidy … [virtually] all that we call entertainment exists commercially. It is convenient both for hungry artists and power-hungry governments to pretend otherwise.¹

By common consent one of the sectors most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, in Ireland as elsewhere, was the subsidised arts sector.² In this article we examine one key aspect of the various responses to the crisis: supports for artists. Inherent in the idea of state support for artists are a range of competing ideas on the role of culture in society. Key to this debate is the idea that artists are “different” and, specifically, that they fulfil a function in society that in turn warrants special treatment. Accordingly, structural benefits for artists such as tax exemptions (Ireland) or unemployment benefits (France) are not uncommon across Europe. Yet, as Matarasso and Landry argued some time ago, there are important questions here about equitable treatment. As they state:

does anyone deserve privileges because of their chosen profession, and if artists, why not doctors, teachers or engineers? Other workers are encouraged to retrain when there is a scarcity of work in their field: why not artists?³

Of course, scarcity/precarity in the arts and in the creative industries more widely is no new thing.⁴ Yet such questions felt more pertinent in the pandemic context, when issues of precarity (and more broadly of labour market conditions, access to affordable housing, etc.) dominated headlines and when the burden placed on those working in healthcare and education seemed especially cruel. Equally, as numerous studies have demonstrated via a range of sampling criteria, the heterogeneity within both the occupational category of “artist” and artists’ income/working conditions has caused significant policy problems.⁵ These debates and ambiguities beg the question as to why this particular cohort should be treated in an exceptional manner.

To examine state support for artists in Ireland, we consider whether current measures are consistent with pre-pandemic policies and speculate on whether they constitute a conjuncture or continuum in policies around both career stability in the arts and the state’s role in supporting this particular strand of the labour market. For the purposes of this article, we concentrate on state support in the narrow sense: cultural policy at the national level that provides monetary support to artists. The specific focus of this article is therefore The Arts Council of Ireland and – given that the Basic Income for the Arts (BIA) pilot scheme is a department-level initiative – the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media (DTCAGSM).

We begin with an overview of how the broad thrust of national Irish COVID-19 policy impacted on the arts sector. We outline the main government interventions and the response of the artistic community, through its representatives and advocacy groups, to these interventions. In the second section, we provide a brief historical overview of Irish cultural policy, to place the status of the artist in context. We discuss the development of instrumentalism as a discourse in Irish arts policy and the appropriation of instrumentalist discourse by the arts sector as an advocacy strategy. Further to a brief discussion of the BIA pilot, we use Hall and Massey’s idea of “conjuncture” as a way of assessing whether the policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic represents a new way of thinking about state support for the arts in Ireland. We argue that this unique set of circumstances, policy trajectories and ideological positions does indeed constitute a conjuncture: “a period during which the different social, political, economic and ideological contradictions that are at work in society come together to give it a specific and distinctive shape.”⁶

What is it about this present conjuncture – of Covid-19, arts policy and the role of the artist in Irish society – that is worthy of further critical reflection? The BIA pilot scheme sees the Irish Government attempt to reconcile the exceptionalism implicit in the idea that artists are somehow “special” with the clear policy (and advocacy) position that artists should be supported because they create a range of forms of value – social, economic, intrinsic and cultural. Simultaneously, the implementation of the BIA scheme has required the government to define what it terms an “artist“ and which “artists” require supports. Concluding with the announcement of the 2022 Budget in October 2021, which consolidated funding for the Arts Council at €130 m and maintained the previous year’s historic level of increase, we argue in this article for the importance of thinking about this conjuncture as an opportunity for mapping the specificity of this present policy moment and of situating current (and ongoing) Irish cultural sector developments historically whilst being alert to both political threats and opportunism.

Covid-19 sector impact & response

In March 2020 festivals, live performances, and television and film production all came to an immediate halt in Ireland, with only the latter returning to limited normalcy during Ireland’s extended lockdown, itself one of the harshest in Europe.⁷ Not only was all public engagement gone, so too was collaborative work, including meeting with other artists in shared workspaces. Although solo artists such as writers and visual artists appeared less affected, anecdotal accounts suggest that many such creatives found themselves psychologically unable to work during the pandemic.⁸ Early into the restrictions the Arts Council estimated that organisations would lose €2.9 m in income for each month of shutdown.⁹ Additionally, many artists reported that they had personally invested financially in the development of work that had now been cancelled or postponed. The amount of these personal losses was estimated to be in the region of €2.5 m.¹⁰ While film and television drama production returned relatively quickly, helped by funding increases in mid-2020 to subsidise higher on-set costs, this was an exception. Live stage performances, both indoor and outdoor, continued to be heavily restricted until the final months of 2021. This contrasted with the situation in other areas of the economy, in particular outdoor sporting events, where relatively large audiences were permitted (18,000 spectators attended the All-Ireland men’s hurling and football semi-finals in Croke Park, while capacity was raised to 40,000 for the finals).¹¹ It is difficult not to see such decisions as ideological rather than operational.

Theatres, cinemas and performance spaces were permitted to reopen in late October 2021, but audience restrictions such as capacity and ticketing limits, face-covering rules, and curfews meant that the sector continued to operate under abnormal conditions. The long-term impacts of the lockdown may be not just economic but infrastructural, as many practitioners were reported globally to be moving out of the sector, taking up employment in better-paid and more stable professions.¹² In the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, Irish artists faced difficulties in accessing major state supports like the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP), introduced in March 2020, because of their status as self-employed workers. The move towards online theatre, either through filmed performances of individual works or as part of new initiatives to fund virtual events (e.g. the Abbey Theatre’s Dear Ireland season; concerts such as the National Concert Hall’s pilot live entertainment events in Dublin’s Iveagh Gardens in front of an audience of 500 people but livestreamed internationally) provided an alternative outlet for some performers, but most were left unable to practice their craft. Online performance suited some, but for others it could not compensate for the loss of a live audience.¹³ At the same time inequality of access to high-speed broadband excluded potential audience members from accessing digital cultural production.¹⁴ Ireland shared with other territories the belief that the arts were central to rebuilding society in the post-pandemic era, even if it was not clear how this was to happen. This aspiration, combined with the sudden shock of losing live performances, offered the opportunity to policy makers to move beyond the instrumentalist argument around the economic benefits of the arts and to put in place measures to directly support the labour of the artist (as social agent).¹⁵

In the immediate aftermath of the lockdown, Minister Josepha Madigan announced a €1 million fund, broken down into 334 awards of €3,000, for artists to create new and original works that could be made available on the internet for free via Facebook (thus perhaps inadvertently providing hidden supports for Facebook).¹⁶ This was greeted with derision by the arts community as being too limiting given that not all artists were in a position to post materials online. It also smacked of a quid pro quo. Specifically, the National Campaign for the Arts (NCFA) issued a press release condemning the limitations of the government response and the restrictiveness of the scheme.¹⁷ The language of the press release was reflective of a widely articulated belief that the arts were to play an important role in getting the Irish public through the pandemic and rebuilding society following its ending:

Arts and culture are a cornerstone of our society, creativity is vital to our health and wellbeing. Culture and creativity are helping people through this crisis; people are looking to the arts for inspiration and consolation. Expectations of financial commitments will need to be revised across all sectors in light of the significant and necessary emergency spend in response to the COVID-19 crisis, but it is imperative that investment in arts and culture, artists, makers and arts workers in Ireland is safeguarded; that the sector is recognised as vital to the fabric of our society, the on-going health, wellbeing and morale of our citizens; that the creativity, innovation and multifaceted skills of artists, makers and arts workers will be a key component in the rebuilding of our country and economy.¹⁸

Following intensive lobbying by the sector, Minister Madigan increased the Arts Council’s budget by €20 m in June 2020. In July 2020, Minister Catherine Martin announced a “stimulus package“ in which the Arts Council budget was increased by a further €5 m, with an additional €5 million in “production continuation” supports designed to offset Covid-19-related cost difficulties in the film and broadcasting production sectors.¹⁹ The Minister appointed an expert advisory group who recommended:

• the creation of an immediate €21.4 m Survival Fund to allow the Arts Council deal with current challenges arising from the COVID-19 emergency, and

• the creation of a €30 m Sustainability Fund in 2021, to support the arts through the continuing impacts of the crisis.²⁰

In its 2021 budget, announced in October 2020, the government allocated a total of €130 m in funding to the Arts Council, an increase of €50 m. Meanwhile, Screen Ireland’s capital funding budget was increased to €26.2 m, over 50% more than the original 2020 allocation.²¹ An additional €50 m was allocated to support the live entertainment sector. Of this, the Arts Council allocated €10.5 m in bursaries, €5.6 m through a new Agility Award, as well as increased funding for individual artists via commissions and projects.²²

The status of the artist

It is important to note that the study of Irish cultural policy does not enjoy as long a tradition in academic circles as does the study of the cultural policy of other jurisdictions. One of the reasons for the relatively tardy development of the discipline may be the reluctance of successive governments, stretching back to the establishment of the State, to articulate a position on support for artists and arts organisations.²³ Cooke and McCall note that “successive [Arts Council] policy statements have emphasised the centrality of the artist to arts policy – yet there is no explicit reference to the artist in the Arts Act – despite its being amended twice in 1973 and 2003“.²⁴ In its 2016–2025 strategy document Making Great Art Work, the Arts Council foregrounded its commitment to fair pay and conditions and elaborated on this in its 2020 dedicated document, Paying the Artist.²⁵ The latter sets out a series of principles surrounding the payment of artists by Arts Council-funded organisations and government departments, while acknowledging the current underpayment of artists and the precarity of their incomes. The Arts Council is, however, limited to putting pressure on its funded organisations to pay artists properly, or setting aside funding for bursaries. This has meant that, despite the publication of a series of reports on the working conditions of Irish artists from representative agencies,²⁶ these reports have not until recently been acknowledged in corresponding official policy or in funding directives. We can see, therefore, on the one hand, a body of work that underlines the economic precarity of artists, and on the other, an evolving discourse around how artistic work should be valued.

From the late 1970s onwards, the Arts Council commissioned a series of reports on the working conditions of artists in Ireland; these have been complemented by reports commissioned by other arts organisations such as Visual Arts Ireland and the Irish Theatre Forum.²⁷ In 2019, two of the authors of this article published Ecologies of Cultural Production, on career construction in Irish film, TV drama and theatre.²⁸ The findings in these reports are consistent with similar surveys from the EU, the UK, the USA and Australia.²⁹ That is, most artists rely, for the majority of their income, on money earned at activities other than their art; their insecure income status makes pension planning unfeasible; many are often unemployed for long periods; and many rely on family members for supports. The only differences that have emerged over the ensuing years are of scale and detail. In their 2010 report, covering both Ireland and Northern Ireland, McAndrew and McKimm estimated that:

• Since the 1979/80 report, the Arts Council had increased the number of artists it supported by threefold to 5,000 with the majority of funding for artists coming from the Arts Council. At the same time, only 10% of their incomes as artists came from the Council.

• Almost half of the time spent working as artists is unpaid. This includes speculative work, some of which may lead to future income.

• Although more highly educated than the general workforce, the average artist enjoyed lower income than workers in the wholesale, retail and motor repairs sectors.³⁰

In analysing this narrative in the context of responses to Covid-19, it is important to bear in mind the distinction between arts workers in secure employment and those in precarious employment. Indeed, it is worth noting that Betzler et al echo the question raised by Comunian and England as to whether the pandemic made working conditions significantly worse for artists, or whether it simply made the pre-existing crisis visible.³¹ As Comunian and England write,

while we acknowledge that most of the organizations who rushed to assess the impact of the crisis are trying to lobby for immediate support, it is also important that they do not reduce these issues to Covid-19. If they do so, they risk that any support or intervention is understood and perceived as a response to exceptional circumstances rather than the need for long-term structural changes in the sector and its working conditions more generally.³²

What the pandemic did reveal was that employees of Arts Council-funded organisations were protected by state supports through the EWSS (Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme), thus assuring them their proper wages and benefits, while “freelance“ artists and arts managers had to avail of the PUP (Pandemic Unemployment Payment), with often problematic consequences if they were offered casual work. This was resolved in the 2021 budget which included provisions for artists receiving the PUP to earn €120 per week without losing their PUP payment. Even still, this is a small sum. It was not possible to establish the ratio of freelance artists to those in secure employment, but an earlier report on the Arts Council-supported sector had noted that in 2008, €66 m went to organisations and the remaining €10 m to artists.³³ This in itself reflects the “professionalisation“ of the arts sectors and what may be perceived as a top-heavy administrative structure.

It would be unfair to draw a picture of a parasitic system of professional administrators dependent on poor but gifted artists for their livelihoods; rather this is a complex ecosystem, whereby arts sector organisations have had to become skilled in the bureaucracy of funding applications and financial reporting as well as HR and other management skills, including marketing and publicity, in order to sustain the infrastructure that delivers the artworks and pays their creators on a project basis.³⁴ In particular, following the 2008 economic crash which saw funding of the Arts Council reduced by 30% between 2008 and 2015, cultural organisations were “expected to achieve more ambitious goals for expanding audiences and broadening access to their services, while at the same time demonstrating greater entrepreneurial spirit in generating a diversity of revenue streams.”³⁵ It is also worth noting that claims that the arts would particularly benefit people during the pandemic remain unsubstantiated.

Instrumental cultural policy and the artist

In discussing Irish cultural policy, artist and academic Paraic McQuaid has noted that

instrumental policy use of culture has increased over the past ten years [since 2011] to the point now where it is almost assumed that culture can only be supported if it achieves a secondary aim in welfare, wellbeing, health, economy, tourism etc.³⁶

In other words, artists are expected to usefully contribute to society by their labour rather than producing art for art’s sake. Of course arguments around the instrumental uses of culture are nothing new and have been dominant in cultural policy discourse at least since Meyerscough’s 1988 report on The Economic Importance of the Arts in Britain for the Policy Studies Institute. As Hadley and Gray note, the developing debate in recent academic work about the instrumentalisation of cultural policy has moved from questioning the drivers of instrumentalism to examining the specific policy implications of instrumentalisation.³⁷

To briefly rehearse the economic argument in the Irish context, a 2009 report estimated the total expenditure impact of Arts Council-funded recipients to be €240.8 m and total employment as 3,034 jobs.³⁸ In addition, it measured the economic impact of cultural tourism and of the contribution of the arts to the smart economy. The report also considered the reputational value of the arts to Ireland, particularly in the wake of the financial crash of 2008. A 2020 report found that in the fourth quarter of 2019, the wider arts sector (including those not supported by the Arts Council) contributed over €1.16bn in GVA, directly supporting almost 55,000 jobs.³⁹ The report also noted that the arts sector is job-intensive, with many jobs such as those in aviation, hotels, B&Bs, pubs and restaurants, festivals, museums, exhibitions and conferences classified as pillars of the Irish economy.⁴⁰

While these reports suggest the arts and culture sector (broadly conceived) is growing in economic significance, it should be noted that these contributions are relatively small compared to other sectors. What is interesting is the different focus of the two reports. The 2009 report effectively marginalises any instrumentalist argument for the arts in Ireland, as the sector is too small and the returns negligible within the context of wider governmental budgeting practices. Indeed, the wider Arts, Entertainment and Recreation sector was ranked 16^th of 20 NACE sectors in 2017, contributing less than one percent of total GVA in the Irish economy.⁴¹ The 2020 report uses a wider definition of the arts sector taken to mean “creative, arts and entertainment activities.” This “core Arts sector” is based on Central Statistics Office (CSO) data and includes the activity of performing arts, support activities to performing arts, artistic creation, and operation of Arts facilities. This broader sectoral definition is much more useful politically and enables advocacy for increased state subsidy (for the arts) on the basis of an economic contribution from a sector nearly twenty times as large. The relatively small economic contribution of the subsidised arts necessarily places a premium on their societal value when making the argument for policy (and thereby funding) interventions. Measuring this non-economic value, however, is more difficult, relying on intuitive reasoning and selective case studies rather than hard data. Nevertheless it is widely assumed that participation in the arts has benefits for social inclusion, community-building, democratic participation and wellbeing.⁴²

In 2020 Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Heather Humphreys, published Culture 2025, setting out a national cultural policy framework for Ireland. Following a five-year stakeholder consultation process, the document aimed to “ensure a unified and coherent approach to cultural policy across government and to planning and provision across the cultural sector.”⁴³ Culture 2025 defined its three fundamental principles as:

1. Recognising the value of culture and creativity to the individual and society;

2. Supporting creative practice and cultural participation;

3. Cherishing our cultural heritage.

Elaborating on the second of these principles, the one with which this article is most concerned, the Minister recognised the need to increase arts access and participation and boost the creative industries, while doubling 2017 levels of public funding for arts and culture by 2025.⁴⁴ Specifically in relation to supporting “artists and creative practitioners,” the Minister pledged to:

• Examine existing systems and supports to help more people pursue sustainable careers in the cultural and heritage sectors;

• Support and promote ambition, risk, innovation and excellence for those creating cultural content and for those working in the cultural and heritage sectors;

• Foster work environments in the arts that are conducive to dignity and respect and that are free of bullying and harassment;

• Enhance support for those in the creative sector in Ireland while they work and interact with a globalised world.

Even before the pandemic, then, we can see a shift in official discourse from instrumentalism as the sole measure of value to a more nebulous understanding of the necessity to support art and artists within a broader value typology. For instance, before any mention of a Universal Basic Income plan, in July 2019 the government announced that a welfare scheme already being piloted for writers and visual artists would be extended to other self-employed artists. Under the scheme, artists could receive Jobseekers’ Allowance and focus on their creative work for a year without having to take part in non-artistic jobseeker activities. This left artists no better off financially but removed the immediate need to seek alternative employment.

The government under Minister Catherine Martin also appointed the Arts and Culture Recovery Taskforce, which comprised representatives of the main arts organisations, including the Arts Council, as well as individual artists. The language of the NCA’s ensuing report, Life Worth Living, is a reminder that the arts community has learnt to capitalise on the instrumentalist argument when making their own case for funding. Thus, the report invoked in its preamble not only the financial impact of the arts but also testimonials by public figures and business leaders to the value of Irish writing and other artforms in enhancing Ireland’s international reputation. In this process, we can see what Hadley and Gray have noted as a shift away from cultural policymakers being people to whom instrumentalisation happens to being active agents who manage instrumentalism for their own ends.⁴⁵

Basic income for the arts

The primary recommendation contained in the Life Worth Living report was the establishment of Universal Basic Income (UBI) for artists. This recommendation marked the first significant step towards providing long-term and meaningful supports for artists. As Social Justice Ireland noted in a response paper, UBI differs fundamentally from the traditional welfare state model in that it is paid unconditionally, giving people the freedom to engage in productive activity without having to apply for benefits. At the height of the first wave of COVID-19 about 14,200 people in arts, entertainment and recreation received the pandemic unemployment payment. Social Justice Ireland estimated that implementing a UBI scheme covering this full cohort of 14,200 people should cost the exchequer about €27 m a year, while a pilot scheme of 3,000 participants would be approx. €5.7 m.⁴⁶ In the 2022 Budget, Minister Martin announced the allocation of €25 m for a Basic Income Guarantee Scheme for artists. The Minister stated that the scheme “will bring new life and support to the arts and culture sector, and I hope it will provide an important legacy for our artists.”⁴⁷

The scheme, now termed “Basic Income for the Arts,” commenced in September 2022 on a pilot basis. According to the government announcement over 9,000 applications were made to the scheme. To determine who was deemed eligible, the department turned to the Arts Act of 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.⁴⁸

There were three categories under which applicants could apply:

1. Practising artists;

2. Creative Arts Workers (defined as someone who has a creative practice or whose creative work makes a key contribution to the interpretation or exhibition of the arts), or

3. Recently Trained, that is, graduated with a relevant qualification in the past five years.

Following a random selection from the 8,200 applicants deemed eligible, 2,000 recipients were announced.⁴⁹ These individuals would receive €325 per week for three years. The group included 707 visual artists, 584 musicians, 204 artists working in film, 184 writers, 173 actors and artists working in theatre, 32 dancers and choreographers, 13 circus artists and 10 architects.⁵⁰ Of those selected, 84% identified as practising artists, 9% identified as Creative Arts Workers and 7% as Recently Trained Applicants.⁵¹ Thus, the funding project can be seen to have been most widely adopted by single, practising artists in the traditional sense of the word. In her announcement, Minister Martin stated that the scheme

makes a strong statement about the value Ireland places on the arts and artistic practice, both for its intrinsic value and in terms of our personal and collective wellbeing, and also in terms of its importance to our identity and cultural distinctiveness on the global stage.⁵²

Embracing intrinsic value, instrumental societal outputs, national self-image and soft power, the statement is a rhetorical cluster of long-standing narratives about the role of the state in supporting the arts.

Continuum or conjuncture?

Of primary interest for the discussion presented here is the implicit assumption that one – anyone – has a right to earn a living as an artist. The summary of the Living and Working Conditions of Artists report noted in the critical review above, contains the following two points:

• Most artists, both “interpretive” and “creative” rely, for the majority of their income, on money earned at activities other than their art.

• Some artists (10% of interpretive artists and 26% of creative artists) have more than one other job.⁵³

Of course, precarity is in no way unique to the arts nor indeed to the wider creative industries. Equally the desire to earn one’s living via “creativity“ (whatever that may mean) does not necessarily cause or correlate to conditions of socio-economic precarity. We also must acknowledge that many cultural workers feel the necessity to work precariously (as unpaid interns, for example) to develop their careers. This inevitably narrows the market to those whose personal circumstances, usually family money, allow them to work for no or little remuneration.⁵⁴ It might, however, be asked: why should artists be entitled to or expect to earn all, or even most, of their income from their work as artists? And what is intrinsically unacceptable about an artist having more than one job? Or, to put it another way, how does the premise that the state should support the artist in the aspiration to be a full-time artist accord with principles of social justice?

Citing Raymond Williams, Deresiewicz locates the origin of our present conception of art in the second half of the 18^th century. Rather than imitating tradition in the form of an artisan, for the first-time artists sought to express a metaphysical “inner truth.” In the 19^th century, the cultured bourgeoisie would embrace this conceptualisation of the artist as a solitary, expressive genius – someone who was exceptional and special – culminating (Deresiewicz argues) in the modernism of figures such as Picasso, Joyce, and Stravinsky.⁵⁵ It is important to note here that the idea of the artist as expressive genius is a relatively recent social construction, and not a universal and immutable condition. Equally, such a broad-brush paradigmatic analysis as the one Deresiewicz presents (his model has various stages of development of the idea of “the artist”) will inevitably need to allow for discrepancy and overlap. But the model he offers supports his more important point: that in all paradigms, artists were sheltered from the market by an external source, whether a wealthy patron, cultural organisation or university. In our present age, Deresiewicz argues, this is no longer the case as the market has conquered all, resulting in the labour market precarity now redolent across both the arts and Higher Education. What is interesting about his argument in relation to the current debate around BIA is that for Deresiewicz, “[g]reat art, even good art, relies on the existence of individuals who are able to devote the lion’s share of their energy to producing it – in other words professionals“.⁵⁶

To make better distinctions (for example, between the arts and culture as either/both industry and public service) requires more research, yet as we have noted, the infrastructure of the arts and of cultural policy in Ireland remains under-researched. As Hadley notes, “The wider field of cultural policy, and the subsidised arts sector in particular, are redolent with both ambiguity and euphemism.”⁵⁷ The policy consequences of ambiguity inevitably result in persistent argument and debate about definitions, content and implementation. There are, of course, important differences between ambiguity as a deliberate choice for actors participating in cultural policy, and ambiguity as a consequential effect of the structural characteristics of the sector. A key issue in defining who, as an “artist,” is entitled to a form of UBI necessitates a form of judgement and decision making which is comparable to arts funding in its resistance to objectivity, such that,

… to talk that way requires us to ask who makes judgments about what things and which people are creative, on what basis they make those judgments, and in what kinds of organizational contexts they make them. What reasoning do they employ? What arguments do they make? Who accepts these arguments, and on what basis? How do all these actors collaborate to produce the consequences of such classifications? ⁵⁸

As Becker has argued in relation to the (equally) ambiguous discourse of creativity, “a major feature of that context is the social ranking of the people making the innovative gestures and things which might under some circumstances be labelled ‘creative’.”⁵⁹

The assumption that – should the market fail to provide such a living at an acceptable level – the state should intervene with public money to remedy the situation is based on the belief that art and culture are important for human flourishing, and that those who perform valued cultural work are deserving of a reasonable standard of living, regardless of the commercial prospects of their chosen profession. Yet within the model of a liberal political society, the argument has been made that “no government should rely, to justify its use of public funds, on the assumption that some ways of leading one’s life are more worthy than others.”⁶⁰ The very idea that the modern liberal Irish state should support artists is deeply problematic:

[…]experience teaches that those who would benefit most from subsidies to universities and museums and other cultural institutions are, on the whole, people who are already very well off, because they have been taught how to use and enjoy art. It seems unfair to provide, under the cover of some ideal of human flourishing, further and special benefits to those who already flourish more than most.⁶¹

How then are we to understand the contemporary relationship between the arts and the Irish state? Gray argues that such processes are now ones of commodification, in which use value is replaced by exchange value such that the arts are,

considered not as objects of use (for example, providing pleasure for individuals […] or for provoking thought) but as commodities that can be judged by the same economic criteria [as] cars, clothes or any other consumer good. Essentially issues of aesthetic […] worth […] are being replaced by those of the material and impersonal marketplace.⁶²

The Basic Income for the Arts (BIA) pilot scheme, however, brings the Irish Government to a position whereby the exceptionalism implicit in the idea that artists are somehow “special” is seemingly reconciled with the policy positions outlined above and the kind(s) of value – social, economic, intrinsic, cultural – that artists create. In the context of Irish cultural policy and within the present moment (and aftermath) of the Covid pandemic, this convergence of historical narratives and contradictions (cultural, social, political, economic) represents what Stuart Hall and Doreen Massey refer to as a conjuncture, “when the contradictions that are always at play in any historical moment are condensed“.⁶³ These moments of “ruptural crisis“ can be seen to brutally resolve contradictions, such as that between the lack of market interest/support for the work of Irish artists and the perception of the value of that work by (inevitably) the arts sector itself and the Department.

The primary aim of social security schemes for artists is to address income inequality, to ensure that no one is significantly materially disadvantaged by their choice of work. Yet as Paying the Artist articulates, “pay is not the only issue contributing to the precariousness of artists’ lives – there are significant areas of structural inequality to be addressed.”⁶⁴ The OECD report on Germany’s equivalent scheme suggested that targeted support can reduce income inequality along the lines of not only profession, but also gender (i.e. the gender of the artist).⁶⁵ De Peuter has highlighted the relationship between social security and class inequalities in the arts.⁶⁶ The development of such schemes therefore has implications for diversity within the cultural sector, a key concern in the Arts Council’s Equality, Human Rights and Diversity Policy and Strategy.⁶⁷ However, the rate struck (€325 per week) places the payment at around minimum wage (€11.30 per hour from 1 January 2023). It is hard to see how this addresses structural inequality. The income will be assessed as self-employed income and thus may take the place of other state supports, leaving the recipient little better off. Thus in their analysis of the BIA pilot scheme, O’Brien and Clancy point out that disabled artists who need significantly higher incomes than the abled bodied to live in Ireland would be financially disadvantaged by taking up the scheme.⁶⁸ They conclude that

[t]he implementation gap has exposed the tension between the new language of cultural and creative industries, with its incongruent combination of unchallenged assumptions around wellbeing and creativity and a need for hard economic metrics, and almost nineteenth century notions of art and artists as framed by the Arts Act, 2003.⁶⁹

The living and working conditions of artists remain a legitimate concern of cultural policy, but as Matarasso and Landry argue, it is a blunt instrument for measuring cultural vitality, “because it depends not on performance but on status. In other words, the artist is entitled to special treatment, with its attendant costs, because of what he or she is, not what they have achieved.”⁷⁰ Interestingly, Matarasso and Landry go on to posit that it is rarely the artists recognised by the state who are historically considered to be the most important. The COVID-19 context should also be viewed via a lens distinct from the econometric one which has to date been dominant. In this sense, UBI for artists – and broader state supports – might contribute to what Jacques Rancière recently called “fostering a stronger sensitivity to the present.”⁷¹ Given the broad range of socio-economic injustices at play across Irish society, there is surely need for a renewed energy into the investigation of how cultural work might be aligned to a more transformative politics.

Conclusion

Existing research on the effects of the pandemic on the arts sector suggests a clear set of distinctions, primarily between those in secure employment (in arts organisations and the culture industries) and self-employed cultural workers. The precarity of the latter group emerged into focus as a result of the specific circumstances of the sudden shutdown of outlets for income-generation on which they had previously relied. In Ireland as elsewhere, this specific aspect of the crisis was the subject of substantial media coverage, not least because of the efforts of advocacy groups making the case for targeted subsidies for cultural workers.

We have suggested that Hall’s idea of the conjuncture is useful to analyse the different social, political, economic and ideological contradictions brought together by COVID-19 in Irish cultural policy and which have resulted in a strategic policy focus on the ambiguous category of “the artist.” The impact of COVID-19 has been to focus official thinking on what had been an evolving policy debate – the need to support the artist in their work. Pat Cooke previously identified the 2008 economic crash as key to the emergence in Ireland of a new discourse on the relations between artist and society. Before that year, the individual artist was relatively marginal to arts policies that prioritised the promotion of the arts to the public; in the years following, the interests of practicing artists became increasingly prominent in arts policy formulation and the politics of arts funding.⁷² In the aftermath of Covid-19, this discourse has again been through a pivotal change.

The entitlement to BIA and its eventual funding disbursement model beyond the pilot phase may end up in the same mode as Arts Council funding. That is to say, there is an argument that arts subsidy is performative in that it creates the category (“the arts”) it is ostensibly designed to administer: that which is funded is “art.” Whatever the eventual model, BIA is a policy intervention driven by ambiguous and rhetorical notions of cultural value. In a statement from April 2022, Minister Martin noted that the scheme was not a social protection but was rather a payment for artists to carry out their work, noting that artists’ income can be precarious, impacting on their creativity. Avowedly neoliberal capitalist justifications were brought into play by Angela Dorgan (Chair, NCA) who noted that the scheme should see both an increase in productivity and could ultimately pay for itself in terms of taxpayer income and return to the exchequer through such increased productivity.⁷³ What is striking about the current Irish arts policy situation is that a number of the contradictions that attempt to be resolved within the BIA scheme are (in theory at least) of no intrinsic concern to artists: the emphasis on value for money in the production of artistic projects; the connection between the arts, economic productivity and the creative economy; and the arts as an instrument of civic improvement. Such processes of policy attachment undoubtedly contribute to broader political agendas, but not to the goals of artists.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Irish Research Council’s Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship Scheme under Grant No. GOIPD/2020/720.

Notes

1. Pick, Arts in a State, ix, (emphasis in original).

2. See, for example, the OECD 2020 Culture Shock report.

3. Matarasso and Landry, Balancing Act, 52.

4. See, for example, McRobbie, Be Creative.

5. See Baldin and Bille, Who is an Artist?.

6. Hall and Massey, “Interpreting The Crisis,” 57.

7. Cullen, “EU’s Most Stringent Lockdown.”

8. See Gibney, “Losing My Creativity.”

9. Arts Council, Findings From Artists’ Survey, 3.

10. Ibid., 6.

11. Gataveckake and O’Regan, “Events Industry Hits Out.”

12. See, for example, O’Brien et al., “Impact Of Covid-19.”

13. For an overview of responses to the move online, see Falvey, ‘‘’It Was a Wipeout’.”

14. See, for example, NESC, Digital Inclusion In Ireland.

15. for an EU wide perspective on the artist in post-Covid society, see: Culture Action Europe and Dâmaso, Research For Cult Committee.

16. See Facebook, “New Measures.” Note the mixed responses expressed in the comments.

17. National Campaign for the Arts, “NCFA ‘Dismayed’.”

18. Ibid.

19. DTCGASM, “Statement by Minister.”

20. Expert Advisory Group, Survive, Adapt, Renew.

21. Screen Ireland, “Screen Ireland Welcomes €26.2 m.”

22. Arts Council, “€130 m Investment Across Ireland.”

23. For a comprehensive history of the relationship between the state and the artist, see Cooke, Politics And Polemics.

24. Cooke and McCall, “Organisers’ Introduction,” 3.

25. Arts Council, Making Great Art Work; and Arts Council, Paying the Artist.

26. See, for example, Arts Council, Living and Working Conditions.

27. Examples include: Living and Working Conditions of Artists (180) and The Living and Working Conditions of Artists in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland (2010), reports derived from a study of professional artists commissioned by the Arts Council, the latter a joint report with the Arts Council of NI. Views of Theatre in Ireland (1995) was commissioned by the Arts Council to provide an overview of individual responses to the situation of theatre in Ireland alongside an economic analysis of the sector. Study of the Socio-Economic Conditions of Theatre Practitioners in Ireland (2005) reported on the economic conditions of theatre practitioners with an emphasis on income relative to comparable professional sectors and on lifestyle expectations. Employment and Economic Impact Assessment of COVID-19 on the Arts Sector in Ireland (2020), commissioned by the Arts Council, largely focused on the economic impact of the pandemic on the arts and artists. Visual Artists Ireland produces an all-Ireland report, The Social, Economic and Fiscal Status of the Visual Artist in Ireland. The survey began in 2008 and was repeated in 2011, 2013, and 2016.

28. Barton and Murphy, Ecologies of Cultural Production. The discussion is extended in O’Hagan, Barton and Murphy, “State Funding, Location, Networks.”

29. for a useful overview of international findings, see Panteia, “Status and Working Conditions.”

30. McAndrew and McKimm, Living and Working Conditions.

31. Betzler et al., “Covid and The Arts.”

32. Comunian and England, “Creative and Cultural Work,” 122.

33. Arts Council, Assessment of Economic Impact, Iv.

34. For a discussion of bureaucracy as a funding “poverty trap” see Troupe, “Funding, Sponsorship and Touring.”

35. Cooke and McCall, “Organisers’ Introduction,” 2. The Fishamble Theatre Company derives only one third of its revenues from Arts Council subsidy, the remainder coming from corporate sponsors, box office revenues, and sales of books and programmes, etc. Personal interview with authors, 2019.

36. McQuaid, “Country Reports: Ireland,” para. 8.

37. Hadley and Gray, “Hyperinstrumentalism and Cultural Policy.”

38. Arts Council, Assessment of Economic Impact, ii.

39. Arts Council, Economic Impact of Covid-19, 4.

40. Ibid., 2.

41. CSO, “Value Added 2017.”

42. O’Hagan and McAndrew, “Restricting International Trade,” 6.

43. DAHRRGA, Culture 2025, 4.

44. Ibid., 16.

45. See note 37 above.

46. Social Justice Ireland, “Delivering a Basic Income.’’

47. Minister Catherine Martin, Dáil Éireann Debate, 19 October 2021, https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/question/2021-10-19/423/.

48. DTCGASM, “Basic Income Grants Awarded.”

49. A further 1,000 applicants were chosen as a control group to facilitate evaluation of the project.

50. See note 48 above.

51. Ibid.

52. Ibid.

53. Arts Council, Living and Working Conditions, 6.

54. For a discussion of intern practices internationally, see Perlin, Intern Nation.

55. Deresiewicz, Death of the Artist.

56. Ibid., x.

57. Hadley, Audience Development, 147.

58. Becker, Creativity Is Not Scarce, 1582.

59. Ibid.

60. Dworkin, A Matter of Principle, 222.

61. Ibid.

62. Gray, Politics of the Arts, 6.

63. See note 6 above.

64. Arts Council, Paying the Artist, 1.

65. OECD, Future of Social Protection.

66. De Peuter, “Beyond the Model Worker.”

67. Arts Council, Equality, Human Rights.

68. O’Brien and Clancy, “A Policy Review,” 51.

69. Ibid., 53.

70. See note 3 above.

71. Ranciere, “Manage to Maintain Dissensus.”

72. Cooke, “Artist and the State.”

73. RTÉ, “Artists to Get €325.”