An opinion piece by: Danaja Antonija Volk 08.12.2025
As CounterCult works to map cultural ecosystems through real-time data, Ireland’s basic income pilot reveals just how transformative evidence-based cultural policy can be.
The idea of a basic income is not new. It resurfaces every few years, usually at the same time as conversations about automation, economic precarity, or whatever OpenAI has just released that week. Lately, a new question has begun: should companies building world-changing technologies contribute to a universal income as part of their social responsibility?
Predictably, this reignites the classic argument: “If people get free money, they won’t work.”
But let’s be honest most people are not dreaming of 40-hour workweeks anyway. Many sectors have been clear for years that their working conditions feel increasingly out of step with what modern life demands. We should be letting people breathe, rest, create, and maybe stop pretending morning people are morally superior just because their circadian rhythm cooperates with capitalism. Night owls deserve rights too; they are just catching ideas instead of worms.
Artists, for example, are often stereotyped as nighttime operators, their internal flashlights turning on just as everyone else powers down. Having lived with enough of them as well as more than a few tech aficionados, I can confirm there’s truth in that. If you’re caffeinated enough to stay awake, you will witness incredible things. If they enter hyper-mode, however, consider yourself temporarily irrelevant.
Beyond these stereotypes, the real issue is that our social and economic systems haven’t had a meaningful update in decades, while technology is evolving at a pace that makes even today’s elementary school students uncertain about the jobs they will hold in fifteen years. There is something oddly refreshing about that uncertainty.
Why Small Countries Matter
Meanwhile, small countries often overlooked in global policy debates are quietly proving that scale can be an advantage. I grew up partly in Rome and insisted I was Italian, despite evidence to the contrary: a Slovenian passport, a Slovenian family, a borderline obsessive knowledge of ski jumping and cycling, and a very Slovenian way of pronouncing “suitcase.” It took my sister pointing out that belonging to a nation of just two million people is its own kind of superpower before I embraced it.
And she had a point: small countries are having a cultural moment.Puerto Rico produced Bad Bunny. Slovenia gives Slavoj Žižek and depending on how you feel about it Melania Trump. Iceland has Björk. Ireland had Sinéad O’Connor, Kneecap and I could go on also for other sectors.
More importantly, Ireland also has something else: a national experiment in universal basic income for artists.
And that raises a timely question: if a small country can produce global cultural impact and lead policy innovation, could Slovenia be next or is this where our small-country magic meets its limits?
Ireland’s Basic Income for the Arts
In 2022, Ireland launched a small but radical idea: give 2,000 artists and cultural workers EUR 325 per week, unconditionally, for three years. No applications. No endless grant forms. No judgement on whether the work is commercial or niche. Just income. The pilot has since been extended to February 2026.
The policy is being evaluated by Alma Economics using a quasi-experimental model, comparing recipients with a similar group of artists who did not receive support. Cultural policy rarely gets this level of methodological seriousness, which is partly why the results have travelled so far beyond the arts sector.
What the data shows
The impact is clear:
- More artists returned from unrelated jobs to work in their field
- Professional autonomy and confidence strengthened
- Psychological wellbeing improved
- More work was produced and shared with the public
- Income from artistic practice increased
Most striking, however, is the cost-benefit analysis: every EUR 1 invested generates EUR 1.39 in social value. Source: Cost-Benefit Analysis Report
That figure alone challenges decades of economic scepticism about funding the cultural sector. Ireland has provided something cultural debates rarely have: numbers that speak for themselves.
Why Numbers Matter
Numbers are imperfect, but they remain the closest thing we have to a common political language. Governments respond to them. Public debate shifts because of them. And they help show what works and what does not.
This is why Ireland’s pilot is so significant. It replaces vague rhetoric about the value of culture with measurable outcomes. And it gives other countries something they can adapt rather than imitate. Which brings us to Slovenia.
Slovenia’s Culture War Over a Pension Reform
Slovenia recently attempted to modernise a Yugoslav-era pension mechanism that granted benefits to exceptional artists based on the personal preferences of whichever minister was in office. The new reform introduced objective criteria: major national or international awards, recognised contributions to culture, and decades of professional activity. Only a very small group of artists would qualify for a pension top-up. It was not a universal scheme.
What should have been a routine regulatory update quickly turned into a political spectacle. The right-wing SDS party launched a referendum campaign framing the reform as elitist and wasteful. Its messaging centred on a single contemporary artwork, used without permission, and presented as evidence of moral and cultural decline.
One of the targeted artists, Maja Smrekar, summarised in the Guardian article the deeper danger:
“When politics decides what is art and what is not, that is when democracy breaks down.”
The episode exposed how cultural policy becomes a proxy battlefield for identity politics, especially in small countries where culture plays a strong symbolic role. It also showed the limits of policies built around exceptional status. When only a narrow group is eligible, resentment and misrepresentation can spread easily.
Reforms like these, by their very design, invite the larger question: should society move toward a more universal, more stable, and less politically vulnerable system of investing in cultural work?
A Policy Shift in Waiting
Slovenia’s new National Programme for Culture 2024–2031 signals a willingness to rethink how cultural workers are supported. It promises fairer working conditions and improved socio-economic security. Brussels is pushing in the same direction: the EU Work Plan for Culture 2023–2026 calls on member states to address precarious labor conditions in the sector.
Small countries, in fact, have a strategic advantage. Pilots are easier to run. Data flows more smoothly through smaller administrative systems. Government, civil society, and the cultural sector are often closer and more collaborative. Ireland is proof that scale can be a benefit, not a barrier.
Slovenia’s own diagnosis
The country’s cultural strategy admits the core challenge outright:
“Data collection on culture is currently sporadic, databases are inadequately integrated, longitudinal studies are scarce, and cultural policy needs to be based on a comprehensive, diverse and analytical database.”
Put simply, Slovenia knows a redesign is needed. But it also knows that without reliable data, the redesign cannot be grounded in reality. Ireland’s model offers a template for how evidence can reshape cultural policy.
The Case for Simpler Solutions
We often pretend progress depends on innovation theatre: kombucha taps in offices, creative workspaces, hackathons, or team building in the mountains. But the simplest solutions are often the most transformative. Pay people fairly and give them time.
Ireland’s experiment shows that when artists have financial stability, they produce more, contribute more, and live better lives. The benefits ripple outward. This is not charity. It is an investment.
Slovenia is already halfway toward recognising this. What remains is the political courage to test a model that treats cultural work as work, not as decoration or ideological currency.
Slovenia is not alone in facing this gap. Across Europe, cultural sectors operate with fragmented information and incomplete visibility of creative work, opportunities, incomes, collaborations, and needs. This is one of the reasons we created CounterCult: to build a platform that does not simply showcase creators, but collects the kinds of structured, transparent, real-time data that cultural policies urgently need. Our goal is not to replace institutions, but to help them see the field more clearly, so future reforms can rely on evidence instead of assumptions or political mood swings.
In the end, the real experiment is not economic. It is political courage.
Sources
Basic Income for the Arts (Ireland)
- Government of Ireland: Basic Income for the Arts Pilot Scheme
https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/9a42a-basic-income-for-the-arts-pilot-scheme/ - Government of Ireland: BIA Pilot Produced Over €100 Million in Social and Economic Benefits
https://www.gov.ie/en/press-release/870af-basic-income-for-the-arts-pilot-produced-over-100-million-in-social-and-economic-benefits/ - Alma Economics: Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Basic Income for the Arts
https://almaeconomics.com/research-post-culture/cost-benefit-analysis-of-the-basic-income-for-the-arts/ - Scribd Host (public): Cost-Benefit Analysis Report PDF https://www.scribd.com/document/921257321/Cost-benefit-analysis-of-Basic-Income-for-the-Arts
- The Journal of Music: New Cost-Benefit Analysis Finds Basic Income for the Arts Produced €100m in Social and Economic Benefits
https://journalofmusic.com/news/new-cost-benefit-analysis-finds-basic-income-arts-produced-eu100m-social-and-economic-benefits
Slovenia Referendum & Cultural Policy Context
6. The Guardian: Slovenia to Vote in Referendum on Artist Pension That Has Fostered Culture War https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/10/slovenia-referendum-artist-pension-culture-war
- Government of Slovenia: Resolution on the National Programme for Culture 2024–2031
https://www.gov.si/assets/ministrstva/MK/Javne-objave/Strateski-dokumenti/mzk-resolucija-ovitek-ANG-DIGITAL.pdf - European Commission / EUR-Lex: EU Work Plan for Culture 2023–2026
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32022G1207(01)
Author’s Note:
I used ChatGPT as an editing and structuring tool to help refine the flow, clarity, and formatting of this piece. All ideas, arguments, perspectives, and original writing are my own.
