Scottish Labour pledges £30m to top up artists’ income to a living wage

Labour has pledged to spend £30m on giving Scottish artists and musicians a living wage, mirroring a similar scheme in Ireland guaranteeing artists a basic income.

Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, said the scheme would be part of a deeper shake-up of cultural funding in Scotland by integrating arts and culture into the Scottish government’s economic strategies if his party won power in next month’s Holyrood election.

The scheme would start with a pilot project to top up the incomes of up to 1,000 artists, musicians and designers to make sure they made a living wage, provided they had proof of other earnings or income.

Costing £30m over two years, Sarwar said it was similar to Ireland’s basic income for 2,000 artists, who were given €325 (£283) a week in three-year cycles. The pilot scheme, which recouped more than its net cost of €72m through increases in arts-related expenditure, productivity gains and reduced reliance on other welfare payments, was made permanent in February.

Labour’s proposal is intended to support an annual income of about £14,000 a year. Artists unions such as Equity have been pressing for a Scottish scheme in the run-up to the Scottish elections next month.

Sarwar said Labour would overhaul Creative Scotland, the government’s arts agency, and make arts and cultural organisations eligible for Scottish Enterprise and national investment bank funding. “The most important thing is are you getting value for money and are you maximising the outcomes for every pound that you spend?” he said. “I don’t think we are right now in Scotland.

“We’re going make sure we deliver an effective budget where every pound is spent wisely rather than layer after layer of bureaucracy, quango after quango. We are going to take responsibility, accountability and spend it in a different way.”

The announcement follows a bitter row about Scottish arts policy in Glasgow after one of the city’s most valued arts clusters, Trongate 103, faced a four-fold increase in rents and 10-fold jump in service charges by the council’s arm’s length property company.

Despite a three-year funding deal for Scottish arts organisations unveiled last year by the Scottish National party government, other Glasgow venues have shut down, including the CCA arts centre, while Glasgow School of Art’s Mackintosh building remains a burnt-out shell.

Sarwar said Labour would increase direct funding for cultural venues, but hours after announcing the policy in Edinburgh, a new poll dealt his chances of winning May’s Holyrood election a significant blow.

The poll by Ipsos for STV found Scottish Labour’s polling support had slumped to 15% in the constituency vote, level with Reform and 24 points behind the Scottish National party on 39%.

With SNP support on the second regional list vote at 29% and Labour in fourth on 15%, that suggests the SNP is within touching distance of winning an overall majority, with the Scottish Greens poised to make significant gains.

The poll suggests the energy and cost of living crisis sparked by the US and Israeli attacks on Iran is now the biggest issue for voters, putting the UK Labour government under further pressure to offer fuel price cuts.

Sam Gough, the chief executive of Summerhall in Edinburgh, Scotland’s largest independent arts venue, said there was huge demand for living costs funding from artists. Summerhall’s new In Vitro residencies programme attracted more than 300 applicants for three places.

“Ireland’s guaranteed wage for artists has been really successful,” he said. “The strength of work coming out of Ireland has been brilliant. We would say this is a really positive way forward.”

Mark Langdon, one of the campaigners to save Trongate 103, who runs the GMAC community filmmaking charity, said the Labour strategy missed out the vital role arts and creativity played in social wealth-building and mental health. “Creativity must be understood as the vital ingredient in a more holistic understanding of well-being, where the creative arts sector contributes well beyond the economic sphere,” he said.

Angus Robertson, the SNP’s culture secretary, said cultural spending in Scotland “far outstrips” spending in either England or Wales under their Labour governments.

“While Westminster governments have hammered our creative sector with damaging policies including Brexit and Labour’s reckless tax on jobs, the SNP has stepped up to provide them with the support and certainty needed to flourish,” he said.