There are three certainties in life: death, taxes and filling out surveys. In days of yore, they came in paper form. They took \u201cjust a few minutes of your time\u201d and were almost always done out of some sense of moral duty to make the collective better. <\/p>\n
Secretly, I have always enjoyed a good survey. I\u2019m not talking the \u201cyes or no\u201d types \u2013 I\u2019m interested in multiple-choice answers, or the trusted \u201con a scale of one to 10\u201d variety. My maximum attention span for these administrative curiosities is about 90 seconds. After that, I get bored, lose interest and check my WhatsApp to see if any of the 50 group chats I\u2019m in have posted a poll about whether Sunday or Monday would suit better for a Zoom that should be an email. <\/p>\n
As an extremely lucky, and immensely grateful, recipient of the Basic Income for Artists (BIA) grant <\/a>in 2022, I accepted my place on the scheme knowing there would be a survey to be completed every six months to track my progress. The BIA was, and is, a research project to find out if giving artists<\/a> \u20ac325 a week would improve their lives and creative output. Spoiler alert: it does. It was a game-changer for me, and not just monetarily. It awakened in me an awareness that my life was not what I thought it was. <\/p>\n Being a writer<\/a> is a strange gig. Whilst people love books, TV shows and films, and some even like reading journalism and the odd trip to the theatre, writing is one of those professions that isn\u2019t much regarded as a \u201creal job<\/a>\u201d. So to be recognised by the State as an artist was profoundly meaningful. It gave me a sense of worth, which is no small thing. <\/p>\n Humans have a tendency to attach worth to how much a person earns. And, like it or not, low-income earners (including artists) are valued less by society. In any kind of domestic partnership, a breadwinner\u2019s time is deemed far more valuable than the partner who earns less. And when the low-earner\u2019s time is deemed not as important, the bulk of the physical and mental load of domesticity falls to them. This mass of unpaid labour eats into their time, leading to fewer working hours, thus keeping their pay low, or seeing it drop even further. It\u2019s a nasty, vicious circle. <\/p>\n [\u00a0 Diarmaid Ferriter: Giving all artists a basic income means they can get on with the bloody workOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n The BIA participant survey taught me this reality. And it caused a giant explosion in my marriage, the shrapnel of which is still strewn about the house. But I wouldn\u2019t change it for anything, because once you see inequity in a domestic partnership, you cannot unsee it. Not ever. And you cannot have a reckoning without first confronting the problem.<\/p>\n The survey was juicy. And I mean really, really juicy. The team that designed and compiled it knew what they were doing. I had expected it to include questions about my professional work and experience, queries about how I sustain my creative practice, and all the kinds of things you\u2019d expect in a research project of this size. But the piece of this survey that hit me like a lightning bolt was the section on \u201ctime use\u201d. In other words, how do you spend your time? And we\u2019re not talking generally speaking, we\u2019re talking hourly counts of the specific details that make up a person\u2019s daily life. <\/p>\n Questions about \u201chow satisfied are you with the amount of time you have spent in the past six months\u201d on various things made me sit up and pay attention. Things such as weekly hours of household work, weekly hours of care work, weekly hours of leisure and socialising. It made my fists tighten. Am I satisfied with my time spent sleeping? \u201cNo. I\u2019m not,\u201d I wanted to shout at the screen. \u201cBut thank you for caring, Survey.\u201d <\/p>\n [\u00a0How Ireland\u2019s landmark \u20ac325-a-week arts scheme changed my life \u2013 I\u2019ve never taken it for grantedOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n When I thought it couldn\u2019t get more deep and meaningful, the survey upped the ante and only went and asked me about my wellbeing. My wellbeing! There were questions asking if I had felt depressed or downhearted in the previous four weeks, or if I had felt anxious. But then came the big kahuna: \u201cto what extent do you feel there has been a sense of worth, meaning or purpose associated with your artistic and creative work over the past six months?\u201d I became undone. <\/p>\n Sitting in front of a screen, I watched the mathematics of my life emerge to form a story I did not ever intend to write. My value as an earner, and the hours I was clocking in on domestic and care labour, collided head on. Slowly and surely, over the years, I had become a stay-at-home mother and I was spending at least 40 hours a week as a cook, manager, personal assistant, logistics specialist, administrative executive, driver, ship captain, bosun and deck hand. <\/p>\n I knew this in my bones, of course, in my gut. My intuition had been screaming it at me for years, but until you meticulously quantify how the hours, days, and weeks of your life are really being spent, you can\u2019t possibly know for sure. The BIA survey gave me that knowledge. And knowledge is power. <\/p>\n What started as a bureaucratic obligation blossomed into a heady mix of psychological intervention, domestic warfare and Machiavellian scheming. I went on strike, I shouted, I pouted, I cried, I printed out think pieces, evidentiary research, data, and rubbed them against my survey answers like flint on stone to burn it all down. Lord help me, I even tried a system called Fair Play, a deck of cards designed to rebalance domestic inequity. It was an epic failure. <\/p>\n I railed against the reality that my time, my 24 hours in a day, was worth less because I earned less, because I chose to be a writer, a \u201cnot real job\u201d, in a sector with as much stability as a broken leg. And in all of this, it became clear to me that because my time was less valuable, I would continue to have to carry the domestic and care load. The truth was stark: my income was never going to rise. In fact, it was likely to keep dropping (this just in: middle-aged women are not in high demand with employers). There was only one option for me: change it. Change it all. I would have to drop the spinning plates, as many as I could, and let someone else, anyone, pick them up. <\/p>\n Fanning the flames of my rising rage was the question that asked how many hours I had spent on leisure time and socialising. In full disclosure, I have endometriosis<\/a>, a chronic, incurable inflammatory disease that is incredibly painful and debilitating. Ain\u2019t nobody with this condition clocking up big hours on the leisure and social front. And yet, I can\u2019t help but wonder, if there had been fewer hours of domestic and care work in my life, maybe a few units of my precious energy could have been spent on having just a smidgen of fun.<\/p>\n The Basic Income for Artists has given me many things; far, far more than I could have ever expected. After Covid decimated the arts in Ireland, and my own career trajectory, the BIA grant gave me the opportunity to wedge open a door I thought had closed, and do the thing I love: writing. It gave me a sense of worth, it took the edge off some mighty medical bills, and it was a wake-up call for the direction my life was heading. <\/p>\n In Budget 2026, the Government pulled off a fantastic performance. They made it look like the BIA scheme will be retained, making them look all trailblazery in the international community, but the prestige of their magical act is not so impressive. The amount allocated is just enough to keep the artists already included on the scheme until February. That money was actually secured and allocated months ago. From February 2026, there will be no more Basic Income for Artists. Next September, applications will open again but will not be processed until the end of October, just in time for \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 Budget 2027. At this point, like a rabbit in a hat, it could all disappear. Award-winning stuff. <\/p>\n