What Art Is Worth

~ Ava Bauer

I spent last fall in Ireland, and I miss the music most of all. Whether you go drinking on a Saturday night or wander around on a Tuesday afternoon, you will hear beautiful, vibrant, live music spilling out of virtually every pub door in virtually every Irish town. So many of the people I met there were wildly talented to the point that their musical ability was somewhat unremarkable to their Irish friends or relatives. But it was remarkable to me, in more ways than one. The arts are ingrained in Irish culture in a way that was astounding to me as an American. Of course, the U.S. also has incredible artists in abundance, but the message our culture sends to them and their work time and time again is a degrading one; art is an impractical pursuit, an unproductive one, and an easy target when adjusting local and federal budgets to accommodate corporate growth and military prowess. This is not the Irish cultural attitude, and that was never more apparent to me than when I learned about Basic Income for the Arts, something I have not been able to shut up about around my creative friends since.

In 2022, the Irish government launched a pilot program known as Basic Income for the Arts (BIA), a policy that provides 2,000 randomly selected artists via lottery with a guaranteed income of 325 euros per week (roughly 17,000 euros per year). Open to a wide range of creative practitioners, including visual artists, writers, musicians, and theatre-makers, the program was designed as a three-year trial to test whether financial stability could meaningfully support artistic production and well-being. At its core, BIA represents a radical departure from traditional arts funding models which award grants based on merit, prestige, or project proposals and can easily become exclusive to artists with significant means or industry connections. Instead, BIA posits artists as what they are: workers. Their labor is valued and seen as deserving of consistent federal support, even on a micro level.

The origins of the program go back to the COVID-19 pandemic. When lockdowns shuttered venues and halted live performances, artists were among the most economically vulnerable populations. At the same time, public reliance on art intensified as the public turned en masse to music, film, literature, and more in search of comfort and connection. In response, Ireland’s Arts and Culture Recovery Taskforce argued that this moment revealed a fundamental truth of art as a public good rather than a luxury. The BIA program emerged from this recognition, proposing that if society depends on artists in times of crisis, then it has a responsibility to sustain them in times of stability.

Three years later, the results of the pilot program appear overwhelmingly positive. Participants report improved mental health, reduced financial stress, and, perhaps most importantly, increased artistic productivity. Freed from the constant pressure to secure supplemental income, many artists have been able to devote more time and energy to their work. The data suggests that when artists are given the resources to focus on creation, they do exactly that. As a result, the program has been extended, signaling governmental confidence in its success.

However, the significance of BIA extends beyond its measurable outcomes. It reflects a broader cultural philosophy in Ireland where art is a cornerstone of national identity. This is evident when looking at Ireland’s immense global artistic footprint, disproportionately large when considering the relatively small population of the country itself. This legacy, I learned in several Irish history courses, is the product of a society that has historically valued storytelling and creative expression as essential forms of resistance to colonial oppression. In the late 19th century, when Ireland was still subject to British rule and beginning to emerge from the worst years of the famine, Irish society experienced what is known as the Celtic Revival. This period was characterized by a growing movement of cultural nationalism, with the Irish language, Irish sports, and Irish literature seeing a major heyday in the country. In 1916, when the Easter Uprising marked the beginning of the Irish War of Independence, its most prominent leaders had all been active participants in the Celtic Revival cultural movement.

This fact, that Ireland’s leading militant revolutionaries were radicalized by a cultural revolution first, laid an essential foundation for Ireland’s national support of the arts and made the survival of art inseparable from the survival of the nation’s identity. BIA was made possible by this context and the idea that, if artists are unable to sustain themselves, the cultural fabric they help maintain begins to unravel. Supporting artists, then, is a cultural imperative that goes beyond economic feasibility, and the strength of this sentiment in Ireland is not shared on the same national level in the United States.

At the same time, the program complicates Ireland’s historical relationship with government intervention, a relationship that has largely been similar to that of the United States. As a predominantly Catholic country, Ireland has long been influenced by the principle of subsidiarity, which emphasizes, essentially, that authority must not interfere with a person’s ability to contribute to their community. For a long time, the Irish interpretation of this value was applied the same way it is in the United States: social and economic issues should be handled at the most local level possible, with minimal interference from centralized authority. The BIA program, however, represents a significant departure from this tradition. By involving direct, unconditional financial support from the national government, the Irish government not only challenges long-standing assumptions about the role of the state in individual livelihoods, but also the idea of what it really means to get in the way of one’s ability to contribute to one’s community. Knowing how it citizens value and rely on art, the Irish government would arguably be impeding upon the artist’s role in the community by not allowing them to practice their work with livable compensation.

That being said, the program’s emphasis on productivity introduces a subtle but important contradiction. While BIA is framed as unconditional support, its success is often measured in terms of increased artistic output. This reflects a utilitarian logic: the program is justified because it produces more art, which in turn generates cultural and potentially economic value. But this raises a fundamental question: should the worth of art be tied to its productivity? Or should artists be supported regardless of how much they produce, simply because their work enriches society in intangible ways?

This question becomes even more complex when considering the broader ecosystem of the arts post-COVID, when in-person and localized audiences are increasingly difficult to engage and draw out. No matter how many works of art are produced, they require audiences to engage with them. If the public is unwilling to attend small gigs, visit galleries, and support local artists, the cultural ecosystem remains incomplete. In this sense, the success of a program like BIA, and the success of the arts in general, depends on the collective behavior of society and makes cultural preservation a shared responsibility.

This program also speaks to a larger question about how governments can support their constituents. To address the socialist elephant in the room: if financial security enables artists to thrive, why not implement a universal basic income? The principles underlying BIA closely resemble those of UBI, a policy proposal that advocates for unconditional payments to all citizens. The positive outcomes observed among participating artists of improved well-being, increased productivity, and greater sense of freedom and innovation apply to the rest of the population as well. Yet the leap from a targeted pilot program to a universal policy is substantial. BIA operates within a specific cultural and economic context, and its relatively small scale makes it more manageable as an experiment. Expanding this model to an entire population would require significant financial resources and political will. Nevertheless, the program provides a tangible case study for what basic income can achieve, challenging assumptions about work, productivity, and value.