Mad yokes.

Here's a policy review of the pilot, PDF warning: share.google/0yqfkDVUTp8i...

The eligibility criteria for the new round are not yet published, but basically you'll have to demonstrate that you have a "professional" practice as an artist according to the criteria for what kinds of art they'll consider.

Fingers crossed.

That arts work is perhaps more precarious than ever was, to the best of my knowledge, not exactly relevant to their response.

People come to Ireland for the culture. It's our whole tourism industry. We don't exactly have sunshine or snow.

This is the govt's response. It is better than nothing.

A set of unprecedented circumstances arose that made the government aware in an UN-IGNORABLE way of the precarity of arts work, primarily in the performing arts but extending across all sectors, and more importantly for the GOVT, also made them unable to ignore its value.

I find it incredibly short-sighted to frame the BIA scheme as a response to artists - and I believe the OP is thinking mostly about writers and your conventional pens and paint artists - being UNABLE to make a living on account of extractive capitalism and LLMs. It's not accurate.

The performing arts have always been a difficult place to make a consistent living. So has material arts, honestly - the amount of time and materials sculptors need to get GOOD is kind of unreal.

Writers, I'm pretty sure, are only included under this scheme because of the very articulate screaming that would ensue if you tried to EXCLUDE them.

And that pushed people out of the arts entirely. Which, the government became aware, was going to have serious knock-on effects for Ireland's economy, in cultural and financial terms.

And honestly the shit that incited this? Wasn't about writers. It was about the performing arts, and to a certain extent material artists who need gallery shows to sell their original work. Income in the performing arts TANKED during the initial phases of Covid, especially the lockdowns.

Limiting it to 2000 people is on the mean-spirited side, and they could at least give the BIA scheme parity with the Govt of Ireland postgrad scholarships and up it to €22K a year.

But, baby steps.

...so they've instituted a lottery to make some 2000 of those artists better able to take advantage of their opportunities.

Quite frankly limiting it to 2000 artists is disgustingly mean-spirited, there are AT LEAST 10,000 artists of whatever stripe capable of international success in this country.

Plus, you know, the social benefits, etc, etc.

But it's not "UBI because the Irish government thinks Irish artists can't profit from their work." It's because the Irish government thinks Irish artists CAN profit from their work, as well as profit the entire country...

An income support scheme which allows more artists to put in the kind of work that results in the lucky-and-good bringing windfalls to the Irish treasury (and they're mostly *getting* big money from foreign markets, when they do get big money) is only a sensible investment.

It is only fractionally more than the unemployment assistance, which amounts to some €13,200pa. Considering the *irregularity* with which writers and artists get paid - nothing one year, tens - or for the lucky and good, hundreds - of thousands in another?