148 Artists in Galway are to receive the Basic Income for the Arts — a payment which will continue for the next three years under the pilot scheme.
Payments will be backdated to the date of selection of August 29 and 2000 recipients country wide will be paid €325 per week for a full three years from the selection date.
The Arts and Culture Recovery Taskforce was set up by Green Party Minister Catherine Martin in 2020 to examine how the sector could adapt and recover from the unprecedented damage arising from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The main objective of the scheme is to address the precarious and financial instability faced by many working in the arts, and to assist the sector recover post-pandemic.
The pilot scheme closed for applications on 12 May 2022. 2,000 eligible artists and creative arts workers were selected at random and invited to take part in the pilot scheme.
The anonymised randomised selection of participants was held on 29 August 2022. Successful applicants were notified recently.
The pilot runs over three years, from 2022 to 2025.
Senator Pauline O’Reilly welcoemd the Galway take-up.
“The Arts are such an important part of Galway life so I am delighted to see that 148 Artists living in Galway have been selected for the pilot scheme,” she added.
