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Artists on Basic Income: Beyond Precarious Livelihoods
Precarity is a longstanding, unresolved structural feature of work in the cultural sector. […] The initiators of this commission were driven to shift the conversation from artists’ precarity to alternative possibilities. They targeted policy measures that hold potential to meaningfully, and lastingly, improve artists’ income security.
The Media Arts Network of Ontario (MANO), with the support of the Independent Media Arts Alliance (IMAA), is proud to host this important new report, Artists on Basic Income: Beyond Precarious Livelihoods.
About the report
Artists on Basic Income: Beyond Precarious Livelihoods is based on an artist-led commission organized in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The commission heard testimonies from 20 artists across Canada during a two-day online event, held in 2021, whose lived experiences are summarized in the report.
Centring artists’ voices, Artists on Basic Income addresses frustrations with the gap between the cultural sector’s social and economic significance and the strained living and working conditions of artists. It explores calls to recognize artists as workers, their experiences with income insecurity and lack of social protections, the connection between precarity and mental health, and the growing housing and studio space crises.
At its core,the report focuses on how artist-testifiers understand basic income and envision its potential to transform their livelihoods, practices, sectors, and society as a whole. It also outlines practical considerations for implementing a basic income program, drawing lessons from testifiers’ experience of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB). The report concludes with key policy recommendations that will be of vital interest to policymakers, arts service organizations, and artists themselves.
Recommendations
- Artists' income and social protection floor must be raised, whether through a basic income program or other government supports.
- Those most in need cannot be left behind.
- Any new income security support must be stable and regular.
- End clawbacks from support payments to artists.
- Preserve existing arts funding and reform the application and award process.
Download the report
Click here to download a PDF copy of the full report.
