Artistic careers often mimic the patterns of the broader artistic economy in which they operate. This system is typically defined by instability, unpredictability, contract-based work, and a star-system in which a lucky few tend to win the highest commissions and gain disproportionate cultural clout in their field. From casting calls to bidding wars, the markets for artistic goods often rely on tournament-style selection models that result in winner-take-all, zero-sum competition for contracts, attention, and the almighty dollar.

Significant effort has been spent creating models in response to these market structures, seen by some as unfair and unsupportive toward emerging artists or those not solely driven by profit. Across institutional, municipal, and state-levels, programs have been designed to help improve artists’ access to healthcare, retirement benefits, resource sharing, and even guaranteed income.

I covered various attempts at improving financial security among artists in a separate article in February of 2025. In this pursuit, I attempted to map the landscape of cultural policies focusing on these issues of financial security, and an unlikely actor appeared; among a more local and decentralized distribution of organizations and states, the country of Ireland stood out for its status as the only nation in the world to attempt a national program offering guaranteed monthly income for working artists.

This puts the Emerald Isle in a unique position within the global cultural policy landscape - within the last half-decade it has swiftly become a case study for proactive, national programs attempting to maintain and strengthen the arts, cultural, and media industries.

One pillar of Ireland’s recent cultural policy has been the introduction of the Basic Income for the Arts (BIA) program: An experimental pilot program providing selected working artists with weekly stipends for the duration of its trial period running from 2022 through 2026.

A recent article published by Arts Analytics highlighted BIA’s research-oriented design and meticulous collection of data throughout the course of the program. Its authors, Joanna Woronkowicz and Doug Noonan, praise the program for prioritizing its design around research, data collection, and impact assessment since its inception. The national scale of such a pilot warrants a significant level of scrutiny toward the program. As the highest profile attempt at breaking the norms within cultural policy in order to enact direct, labor-related assistance within the arts sectors, it behooves observers to understand the mechanisms used, assumptions made, and paradigms within which such a policy is operating.

The Basic Income for the Arts (BIA) Program

Much attention has been paid to the BIA since its introduction, with critics and defenders across the political spectrum. Researchers Satu Teppo and Paraic McQuaid investigated a full spectrum of articles, research, and commentary on the development and implementation of the BIA, analyzing the broader political terrain that allowed for its introduction as well as how such policies reflect shifts in the broader social value toward the arts in Ireland.

Historically, public initiatives designed to support creatives date back to the 1970s in Ireland, with various examples including Aosdana, established in 1981. This collective income-sharing scheme, managed by the Irish Arts Council, invited select artists with developed bodies of work. This initiative along with others like the Social Welfare Scheme for Professional Artists on Jobseekers Allowance piloted in 2017 and made permanent in 2019. This scheme exempted working artists from the need for proof of labour market activation for their first year on Jobseekers Allowance in order to focus on their creative practice.

Politically, it is important to highlight that Ireland’s parliamentary democracy follows a consensus model emphasizing “inclusiveness, bargaining, and compromise” in contrast to the majoritarian model and its “exclusive, competitive, and adversarial” nature. Consensus democracies often exhibit more diffuse executive power shared across a “broad coalition cabinet” incentivizing collaboration and unity among governing parties. When this model of democracy is witness to diverse activist campaigns by strong advocacy groups for different artists and artforms, it becomes more plausible for supportive philosophies toward the arts to take root across various party platforms. This is precisely what Ireland has seen in recent years, so much so that six out of Ireland’s seven major political parties share common platform statements addressing artist incomes and living wages in the arts and two explicitly reference UBI.

The entrenchment of such policies across the political spectrum allows these initiatives to sustain throughout changing administrations and continue to develop throughout different policies and administrative actions, thus further cementing Ireland’s history of support on which to cite precedent in future policy iterations.

Researchers pinpoint specific pillars of support that could be identified as foundational for a concept of an “Irish Model” of cultural policy. Such a national platform for support among artists rests on:

a government operating on consensus-oriented democracy,
strong advocacy groups sustaining pressure across such coalitions throughout various governments, and
a history of socio-political support for both UBI broadly and issues of artist lifestyle and precarity on which to continuously build.

Finally, it is worth noting the unique method by which such a program for artists is being implemented. The policy would seem to most naturally fit within the purview of either the Arts Council as a traditionally arms-length grant maker or the social welfare focus of the Department of Social Protection, as the previous schemes for jobseekers were housed. However, it is primarily managed by neither; instead, the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport, and Media exerts direct jurisdictional control over the BIA. While initially making sense in the context of the Prime Minister’s previous leadership of said department, this implementation is notable given its break from both traditional cultural policy and social policy apparatuses.

The Broader Framework: Culture 25

The BIA scheme does not exist in a vacuum and is situated within the broader cultural framework outlined in 2020: Culture 2025. This action plan put forth an all-of-government approach to cultural policymaking anchored on a collection of core values:

• The intrinsic value of culture.

• The value of arts, culture and heritage to our lives and our communities.

• The right of everyone to participate in the cultural and creative life of the nation.

• The value of creativity to individual and collective wellbeing.

• The importance of the Irish language, our cultural heritage, folklore, games, music and the uniqueness of our Gaeltacht areas.

• The value of cultural diversity, informed by the many traditions and social backgrounds that constitute contemporary Ireland.

• The value of culture as a means of fostering a more sustainable future for Ireland, including through economic, environmental and social policy.

• The value of culture in presenting Ireland to the world.

Researcher Stephen Hadley notes the vacuity of these value statements when compared with concrete actions set forth for supporting culture and the arts. As noted, “the actual mechanisms for doing this are scant.” and details that many policy goals are often more reliant on other plans, such as the Audiovisual Action Plan (DCHG, 2018)), than anything unique to Culture 2025.

Overall, Hadley criticizes the plan as overly diffuse given its scope, describing the potpourri of government agencies with responsibilities under this plan as “a disparate grouping with oftentimes very different goals.” The lack of central clarity results in a vague motivation to support culture and, when probing the existing mechanisms of support like the Audiovisual Action Plan, reveal deeply instrumentalist views towards arts and culture. “Both Culture 2025 and the Audiovisual Action Plan emphasize a reliance on the operation of the free market, particularly through an emphasis on the role of the tax expenditure, S481, in supporting the audiovisual industries.”

Globalization and the free market are deeply intertwined with the success of such policies as this tax expenditure, reinforcing the notion that culture is an economic and nationalistic instrument. Tax incentives for large film productions to come to Ireland from abroad paired with films and projects that tell a singular, mythologized “Irish Story” assert art and culture’s use in selling “a particularly marketised, commodified vision of Ireland,” revealing “problematic silences towards the communicative and representational nature of the sector.”

This instrumentalist value is unsurprising given that the accepted definition of cultural industries in Culture 2025 is “industries and occupations which focus on creativity as a means to deliver commercial success, export growth and resilient employment for Ireland.” It is for these reasons that Stephen Hadley claims Culture 2025 stands as an example of “Cultural Policy Realism” in its inability to deviate from traditional, instrumentalist notions of culture, anchored in economic stimulation, paired with an approach aimed at democratizing a specific Irish culture on the world stage. As Hadley might argue, “One is left to wonder at the degree to which the intrinsic value of culture (the first stated “Key Value”) would be so cherished were its instrumental (economic) effects not present.”

cultural policy realism

““Cultural policy realism works by limiting our horizons of thought. You can only think in a predetermined direction: “We need more money for culture.” So, if you are “stuck” in the model of public funding for culture, can you jump into alternative ways and start thinking differently? The current model of public funding is not working, and that is because it was never intended to actually work.””

— Stephen Hadley

Those words and the many to follow are from Hadley in developing his concept of “Cultural policy realism.”

This notion is borrowed from cultural theorist Mark Fisher’s concept of capitalist realism in which the contemporary global political system is so entrenched in capitalist logic such that any viable alternative is lacking in the popular imagination. Cultural policy realism extends this line of thought into the territory of cultural policy by describing a system of funding so deeply rooted in the notion of cultural policy-as-subsidy that any alternative remains deeply unimaginable and, as such, unviable.

“...the arts sector is not a knowledge-based community, but rather finds the basis for its action in beliefs or convictions, so the actors are not really looking for evidence, but for confirmation of their beliefs.”

Hadley finds the root of this issue in the gap between the way the cultural sector is seen and the way that it truly operates. Hadley explains that, while it is often perceived as a knowledge-based economic sector, artistic production is fundamentally a belief-based system; The system which is often approached with strategies of measurement and economic calculation is actually a highly belief-based, culturally-dependent, and philosophically-rooted set of activities whereby the models of funding and measurement reflect the cultural attitudes held more than anything.

Regarding proponents of research, advocacy, and cultural policymaking, these actors “think that things can change for the better if they collect enough evidence of cultural values and justify the need for public funding.” However, when the evidence brought forward does not lead to meaningful change or minimally influences policy, it is because of this discrepancy.

“...the arts sector is not a knowledge-based community, but rather finds the basis for its action in beliefs or convictions, so the actors are not really looking for evidence, but for confirmation of their beliefs. The way these people think about the world has more to do with a religious view than a scientific one. These beliefs are transmitted, inherited through social reproduction, and remain largely unquestioned.”

Progressive strategies are not aided by the structural issues endemic to the arts sector, such as persistent budget shortfalls and high turnover. These pervasive issues lead to underdeveloped avenues for professional development, leaky institutional knowledge, and a revolving door of staff at all levels in need of constant training and retraining in lieu of longer-term strategic progress.

These systemic pitfalls can be partially explained by the historic role of the sector’s funding bodies. Broadly speaking, the traditional model of cultural policy and arts funding comes in the form of public subsidy in the form of grants to artists and arts organizations, commonly facilitated by a local, regional, or national arts council. The model of public grantmaking for artworks, labor, or institutional needs was effectively pioneered by the Arts Council of Great Britain (now Arts Council England) as the brainchild of economist John Maynard Keynes in 1946.

Arts councils began to appear across the world emulating this approach in the years to come and established the ground on which modern cultural policy now stands. This ground, however, might be stifling the invention of truly creative cultural policies by so deeply stabilizing traditional institutions of policymaking.

“It is almost as if Keynes started a cult of sorts in 1946 when he said, “This is how culture should be supported,” and because he was in a position of power, he didn’t have to prove anything to get government support. It was a unique set of historical circumstances.”

Reframing the arts and cultural sector as a belief-based system more than one based on steady knowledge accumulation, however, helps cut to the root of these systemic issues by casting a light on the values that shape the industry, particularly the beliefs of policymakers and arts funders. Under these notions, the arts sector is not one operating on positivist notions of forward progress. It is a sector that constantly reflects the values of its funders, taking whatever shape is allowed by the permission structures built by audiences, donors, grant initiatives, and broader cultural policies.

Concepts like cultural policy realism therefore aid in better understanding a funding body or agency’s position relative to the established policymaking frameworks, with broader historical shifts being witnessed over time.

Historic Shifts in Cultural Policy Frameworks

Taking a broad historical lens, two distinct approaches to arts funding have emerged within academic study: democratization of culture and cultural democracy.

While semantically similar, these frameworks help to unpack different value structures inherent throughout the various approaches to cultural policymaking. As described by researcher Yves Evrard as far back as 1997, democratization of culture is the main approach historically taken by western European nations, in which the goal being policies that “disseminate major cultural works to an audience that does not have ready access to them, for lack of financial means or knowledge derived from education.” Approaches to arts funding with measurements centralized around museum, symphony, or theatre attendance and visitor demographics would exemplify this paradigm well.

On the opposite end of the pole lies cultural democracy, a newer approach in which the central goal becomes support of “free individual choice” whereby the implementation of such policies is “not to interfere with the preferences expressed by citizen consumers but to support the choices made by individuals or social groups through a regulatory policy applied to the distribution of information or the structures of supply.” This approach mirrors policy approaches taken in other non-cultural markets where factors like supply, production, innovation, and distribution are all considered.

Hand-drawn comparison showing “Democratization of Culture” as art delivered from one source to many people, and “Cultural Democracy” as people creating and sharing culture with each other. — Figure 1: Democratization of Culture vs. Cultural Democracy. Source: Created by Author

Understood in basic terms, democratization of culture embodies a “top-down” approach aiming to expand access to established artforms, with their status as valuable cultural goods taken as given. Efforts to increase opera attendance or museum visitors, particularly among classes of people traditionally unlikely to attend, are all forms of democratization of culture.

Cultural democracy, on the other hand, centers the subject (viewers) and their relationship to the artform; cognitive aspects of both viewing art and creating art may be considered, with the definition of art and beauty taking on a more flexible, “bottom-up” approach. In effect, democratization acts in a centralized approach in which art is distributed to periphery receivers while cultural democracy acts along a network structure of connections, relationships, and individuals as both producers and receivers of art. Both reflect broader images of thought with regard to the order of the world, one being hierarchical and the other more horizontal.

Conclusion: Between revelation and Reversion

In understanding the complicated relationship between the philosophies and mechanisms behind cultural policy, we can better grasp the significance of Ireland’s current model, exemplified by Culture 2025 and the BIA.

While noteworthy for its national scale and commitment to artistic pay and resource equity, the BIA is framed by a larger cultural policy initiative that falls back on traditional instrumentalist notions of arts and culture as useful only as economic engines or sources of diplomatic soft power. The democratization of culture, as seen in more specific policy mechanisms like the Audiovisual Action Plan, reinforces a culturally dominant idea of what counts not just as art, but as Irish art.

This top-down approach to artistic support is endemic within the goals of the BIA scheme, with many of its goals having little to do with the priorities of the individual artists funded. Policy goals like “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” may serve broader political agendas but are rarely the highest priorities for working artists within their own practice.

Cultural policy is rarely perfect - Even when functioning properly, there still arise fundamental technical issues even so far as the question of who an artist is. While seen by some as superfluous or overly philosophical, questions like these are fundamental to the functioning of public policies like basic income programs and other methods of state financial support.

In spite of the potentially antiquated philosophical underpinnings of models such as Ireland’s, what matters is their continued existence, experimentation, and constant critical evaluation. Despite diffuse aims and overly political goals, it is only through continued engagement with the process of cultural policymaking that more democratic, equitable, and progressive models can be born in the first place.