“Creative freedom cannot flourish where life is mere survival.”
By Daniel G. Andújar
For decades, it has been said that art is a territory of freedom.
But what freedom can exist when most of those who create are trapped between the urgency of survival and the impossibility of doing so with dignity?
In Spain, almost half of all artists earn less than €8,000 a year; more than 60% live below the minimum wage.
This precarity is not an accident: it is the symptom of an economic system that exploits the symbolic value of culture while abandoning those who sustain it.
1. From structural injustice to cultural right
Defending a Basic Income for the Arts (BIA) is not asking for a privilege but correcting a structural injustice.
The cultural market presents a fundamental anomaly: it undervalues art and overexploits those who produce it.
Artistic creation generates positive externalities—social cohesion, collective identity, psychological well-being, international projection—that benefit all of society, but which the market does not remunerate.
From a public economics perspective, this imbalance is a market failure that justifies state intervention through redistributive policies.
2. The BIA as investment, not expense
“The Arts Basic Income does not subsidize; it invests in freedom and social value.”
By providing a stable basic income, the BIA internalizes the non-monetizable social value of culture, acting as a corrective and preventive mechanism against the erosion of cultural capital.
It is not an expense but an investment with measurable return:
Ireland’s Basic Income for the Arts program has demonstrated a social return of €1.39 for every euro invested, thanks to greater productivity, local reinvestment, and improvements in well-being and mental health.
3. Freedom, risk, and dissent
The current system rewards docility and punishes dissent.
Precarity acts as invisible censorship: those who fear not making ends meet avoid risk, criticize less, and adapt more.
So-called creative freedom becomes a privilege reserved for those who can afford to fail.
The BIA democratizes that risk: it ensures that the possibility to break, experiment, or dissent does not depend on status or accumulated capital.
4. Against bureaucratic meritocracy
The notion that artists must survive on competitive grants or institutional favors is another form of control.
Competitions and open calls perpetuate a bureaucratic meritocracy where success depends on administrative fluency rather than artistic urgency.
The BIA replaces that exhausted model with one of trust and continuity—funding time, not paperwork.
It liberates the energy currently wasted on justifying expenses or competing for crumbs.
5. International evidence
This is not a utopia.
Ireland has paid 2,000 artists €325 per week for three years.
The results are undeniable: greater production, better mental health, and more stability.
Recipients devoted eleven additional hours per week to their creative practice, invested more in materials, and drastically reduced anxiety.
New York’s Creatives Rebuild program reduced depression by nearly 30% and improved work-life balance for thousands of creators.
Germany has proven that unconditional income does not disincentivize work—it dignifies it and stimulates productivity.
6. Towards a Spanish model (BIA-E)
In Spain, the BIA would be the missing piece of the Statute of the Artist.
It would guarantee a dignified income—€1,200–€1,300 per month—compatible with reduced Social Security contributions.
It would formalize artistic work, reduce talent drain, and provide stability to a sector essential for democratic life.
Culture is not a luxury; it is an infrastructure for collective thought.
7. A new economy of use
The BIA opens a deeper door: rethinking authorship, ownership, and value.
If subsistence is guaranteed, artists can move beyond selling the “unique object” and explore open circulation models—shared projects, collective authorship, open licenses, and social returns measurable through use rather than price.
In the age of artificial intelligence and infinite reproduction, valuing art through scarcity is an anachronism.
The BIA would enable a shift from the economy of the object to the economy of use, where value lies in what the work activates: learning, dialogue, collective memory.
8. Investing in democracy
The question is not whether we can afford a Basic Income for the Arts,
but whether we can afford to continue without it.
Every artist who gives up due to precarity represents a loss of intangible heritage; every unrealized project, a wasted collective opportunity.
Guaranteeing a material foundation for those who produce culture is to defend democracy in its deepest sense: the defense of free, shared thought.
“To care for those who imagine the world is, after all, a way of building it.”
The Arts Basic Income is not a utopia:
it is a possible, necessary, and urgent policy—an investment in dignity and the future.