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New Irish Pilot Scheme to Assist Creative Artists


While I welcome any scheme set up to help creative artists in Ireland, this latest effort from the Irish Department of Culture seems to have been cobbled together by a committee of civil servants pretty clueless about the arts in Ireland and creative artists.

A PILOT INCOME support scheme for artists will see 2,000 eligible participants chosen at random to receive €325 per week.
The Basic Income for the Arts pilot comes following a recommendation of the Arts and Culture Recovery Taskforce that was instituted in 2020 as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Culture Minister Catherine Martin has allocated €25 million as part of Budget 2022 to the scheme, which aims to stem the flow of creative people out of the arts sector.
It’s envisaged that the income support will encourage creative arts workers to focus on their craft without having to enter into employment in other sectors to sustain themselves.
The pilot scheme will run for three years and the department has said there is “no guarantee that funding will continue after the pilot.”
Applications for the scheme are open for 30 days from 12 April with the department providing an illustrative list of the types of eligible artists and creative arts workers.
The definition of an arts worker being used is:
A creative arts worker is someone who has a creative practice and whose creative work makes a key contribution to the production, interpretation or exhibition of the arts. “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.


Again, I welcome the initiative to support a sector that has taken a hard hit over the past two years, the list of starkly conflicting criteria that creative artists qualify under, or don't as the case may be, is mindboggling in misunderstanding how diverse creative artists have had to learn to be to survive in their industry. It is as if the Irish government believes we were romantically born as artists only ever to do one single thing.
We can write a few poems or novels, bang out a few books, but don't dare supplement your income by becoming a freelance journalist. You're out and don't qualify.
If you are a writer and musician providing workshops or teaching - get the feck away with ya - you don't qualify and should never have dared to support yourself with anything else. Let alone daring to pass what you learned about your craft to anyone else.
If you are a writer who writes biographies or a translator, get the feck away with ya - you don't qualify. Your creative craft as a biographer or translator doesn't cut it with us. You should have stuck to eating beans on toast and writing crappy poems, not learning languages collaborating with writers to bring their artistic works to new audiences.
But hey, sons and daughters of the Irish creative world, if you are a Visual Arts Curator, Artistic Director, Hair Designer or Architect (don't even ask me!) - get in there for your money.
If you are a book illustrator, out of work, get in there. If you are an editor or proofreader, out of work - get out of here. Who on earth in the Culture Department decided that illustration in the field of literature was a creative craft but editing or translation wasn't?
But hey, there's good news for the comedians and circus clowns - you're in. But for god's sake, between now and June, if you branch out, stick to acrobatics and choreography. Throw a hat down on Grafton Street, do a few mimes, tell a few jokes, a bit of sword-swallowing, but don't accept that job your brother-in-law offered you to do a bit of plumbing or tiling. Otherwise, you're screwed and you'll never tell another joke or do a backflip again.

What's completely missed in this new arts initiative is a complete lack of understanding of the artistic field they are trying to help. Just like the three artistic grants awarded last year by the Irish Culture Department, it is rewarding and funding creative artists who have already excelled in their chosen field, and leaving dedicated bread-and-butter creative artists at the lower end to waste, those who consistently through circumstances already have had to diversify and take on roles or skills not always in their chosen field. They all want to get back to what they believe they do best and at least earn a basic living.
So, if you are a film or theatre make-up artist or hair dresser, just tell them on your application that you are a make-up or hair designer. Just don't mention the word 'artist' or you are screwed. Stick to designer, engineer or director, because the Department of Irish Culture and their boffins haven't quite figured out that some of the people operating in those roles are not - have never been - creative artists.

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