#WeAreViable, aren’t we? Music careers, state support, and the political feasibility of a Basic Income for the Arts

Abstract

During Covid-19 in the United Kingdom, many musicians failed to qualify for income support, leading the Government to announce it would only “support viable jobs”. This implication that creative work was not viable angered many, leading to the hashtag #WeAreViable on X (formerly Twitter) to defend the musical economy. However, given evidence concerning musicians’ incomes, are musical careers, in fact, viable? Have they ever been? This paper critically interrogates notions of artistic career sustainability by adopting a historical case-study approach to explore how being a musician in the UK has always required forms of subsidy given unpredictable and poor financial returns. Following the systematic destruction of many of these systems of support, this paper then asks whether or not a Basic Income for the Arts represents a suitable mechanism to fill this gap, systematically evaluating the concept through the typology of “political feasibility”, ultimately suggesting that it is not.