There is a country where the State has decided that art is not a luxury, but a way of life.
Not a pastime, not a privilege reserved for the few, but a vocation that generates value, culture, and social cohesion. That country is Ireland.
In its 2026 budget, the government of Dublin announced that the Basic Income for the Arts, the basic income allocated to artists, will become a permanent measure — a tangible recognition of the civil and spiritual function of art.

 

A successful experiment

The initiative began in 2022 as a three-year pilot project, aimed at about two thousand musicians, painters, writers, actors, dancers, and creative-sector professionals.
Each of them received €325 per week — a modest but steady amount — without artistic production requirements or burdensome bureaucracy.
The goal was simple yet radical: to give artists back the time to create, freeing them from the economic anxiety that so often suffocates research and thought.

After three years, the results speak for themselves.
According to analyses published by several international outlets, the majority of participants reported a marked improvement in their quality of life: more time devoted to artistic activity, less financial stress, a more stable sense of social purpose.
An official study estimated that for every euro invested, society received cultural and economic benefits exceeding the initial cost — proof that beauty, when supported, gives back far more than it receives.

Minister Patrick O’Donovan, presenting the 2026 budget, spoke of “a cultural policy that does not merely fund projects, but creates the conditions for creative freedom.”
It is rare language, restoring to art its intrinsic value, no longer subordinate to the logic of the market.

 

Art as spiritual citizenship

What Ireland has set in motion is not merely an economic programme, but an ethical principle.
In a world where almost everything is measured in terms of productivity and profit, granting a steady income to those who create means recognising that the time devoted to art is not time taken from work, but its highest form — the one in which mind and sensibility build invisible bridges between people.

It is, ultimately, an act of trust: the State entrusting artists with a portion of its collective breath, so that they may transform it into thought, music, word, or image.
It is not a matter of paying for art, but of protecting the freedom to think in images, to compose, to write, to invent new ways of feeling.

 

Questions and perspectives

Naturally, a project of such scale raises legitimate questions.
How can financial support avoid becoming mere assistance? What criteria can ensure fairness across disciplines, genders, and regions?
And above all, how can the artist’s inner freedom be preserved from every temptation toward cultural standardisation?

In Ireland, the first three-year phase was based on a random draw among qualified applicants, to avoid favouritism or aesthetic judgement.
Now there is discussion of introducing mixed criteria that take into account both continuity of work and the social impact of artistic activity.

The greatest challenge, in truth, is to keep intact the original spirit of the initiative: not to measure creativity, but to protect it.

 

A suggestion for Europe

The Irish experiment represents a valuable suggestion for Europe.
While many countries still entrust the fate of the arts to occasional grants or private patrons, Ireland has chosen a different path: to recognise permanently the public function of artistic creation — not as a concession, but as an act of democratic maturity.

What emerges from this experiment is a vision of the artist no longer as an isolated figure, but as an active part of the social body.
Creation thus becomes an act of spiritual citizenship — a way of taking part in the life of the community through language, music, image, and poetic word.

 

A proposal for us

Perhaps it is time to open here, too, a serious and constructive dialogue on the economic and moral protection of art.
It is not a matter of replicating the Irish experience mechanically, but of understanding its deeper logic: to restore honour to creative work, to regard it as a collective investment rather than a superfluous expense.

A possible Italian programme could take many forms — three-year fellowships, artist-residency funds, tax incentives for those who dedicate their lives to art — but the principle remains the same: to recognise that art is humanity’s heritage and a guarantee of civilisation.

Because a country that supports its artists performs not an act of charity, but of intelligence.
And because, as Ireland’s example teaches, beauty is not preserved only in museums: it lives wherever the freedom to create finds the courage to exist.