CORPORATE CHRIST

IT'S TIME TO PAY ARTISTS!

We live in a society that consumes the creative output of others as though it were free air - streaming tracks, watching performances, reading books, attending exhibitions - yet the people who produce that work are too often invisible, unsupported, precarious, burdened by illness, disability, financial hardship and mental‐health struggles. Here in Wales, in the city of Cardiff and its surrounding creative communities, this contradiction is especially stark.

If you are a musician, a writer, a performer, a visual‐artist, you already know the truth: you create so others may experience meaning, beauty, disruption. You turn your wounds into craft. You transmute your pain into entertainment. But while the audience watches, listens, reads, applauds - you still pay the bills. You still worry about the rent. You still negotiate part-time jobs, benefits systems, illness, disability.

Therefore: our pain is your entertainment. And so the time has come to pay the artists.

1. The hidden cost of creativity

Let us look at the truth beneath the veneer of glamour. In Wales, research now shows a sobering reality for our creative sector. Freelancers and behind-the-scenes workers in TV, film, music, writing report anxiety, insecurity, mental‐health issues. Specifically: in one recent initiative in Wales, 60% of behind-the-scenes creatives said they were struggling financially.

And 68% of creative freelancers were considering leaving the industry altogether.

Meanwhile, across the broader arts and health terrain in Wales, creative activity has been shown to support mental wellbeing, reduce isolation and assist people living with long‐term health challenges.

Yet the paradox remains: the same individuals whose creativity sustains our cultural ecosystem are often the very ones who cannot sustain themselves.

Think of the musician who writes songs in the basement after midnight because their daytime job demands their energy, or the writer who journals their trauma because they cannot afford therapy, or the visual artist who is coping with a disability and uses art as both outlet and vocation but has no reliable income. This is not an exception — this is the norm in many creative lives.

And in Cardiff – a city rich in history, creativity, queer culture, radical art and dedicated independent scenes - the promise of “making it” often conceals the daily grind of health challenges, precarious gigs, low pay, and nothing guaranteed. If you live and work here, you know the feeling of balancing benefit forms, medical appointments, rehearsals, gigs, deadlines, all while trying to keep that spark of artistic ambition alive.

Yes: our pain is your entertainment. But if the economy demands our output and celebrates our product, the contract must flip. We must be paid. We must be valued.

2. Intersectionality: disability, mental health and the arts

This conversation cannot ignore the interlocking factors of disability, mental health and creative labour. Wales bears the imprint of inequality: people with disabilities, people living with chronic illness, people experiencing mental‐health issues often face fewer opportunities, more barriers, less security. For example, a survey by Public Health Wales found that people who reported a disability or poor health were less likely to be satisfied with opportunities for their mental wellbeing.

In the creative industries, those struggles are amplified. The demand for flexibility, irregular work, travel, gig-based pay, self-promotion, short deadlines all collides with the reality of living with illness, fatigue, disability, or enduring periods of recovery. The body and the psyche carry the legacy of trauma, of social exclusion, of stigma. And yet those same bodies and psyches become the raw materials of art.

You, the reader, perhaps know this dynamic well. You might be the musician whose colitis flares after a tour, the author whose schizophrenia forces rest days in the studio, the visual artist whose disability means inaccessible venues, the performer whose mental health has braced the weight of being queer and public. You transform your pain into creation, but you shouldn’t have to do so under the threat of destitution.

If we are to imagine a future where creative people in Wales, especially in Cardiff, can thrive rather than merely survive – then we must recognize that financial security matters. Because art demands risk, experimentation, failing forwards - and you cannot take risks if you’re one invoice away from losing your home or your benefits.

3. Why Wales must lead: culture, economy, future

Wales is more than a backdrop. We are a nation of stories - of miners and choirs, of poets and rock bands, of queer culture rising from urban streets and rural valleys. Cardiff sits at the heart of this: a city in transformation, full of potential, creative ambition, and social justice currents. Your work matters not just artistically, but socially and economically.

The creative economy is a strategic asset. Artists generate culture, attract tourism, enrich our communities, challenge norms, imagine futures. But when the creative class is underpaid, invisible, overworked and under-resourced, the ecosystem collapses and the output suffers.

Introducing a Basic Income for the Arts approach in Wales would be a bold statement: that we value not just the product but the person; that culture is infrastructure; that artists are not luxuries but essential fabric. Such a scheme would align with the principles of the Well‑being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, which emphasises sustainable livelihoods, equality, creative economies and future-ready communities.

It would free artists here to experiment, to reflect their communities, to innovate, without collapsing under benefit forms or gig-pay uncertainty. A paid artistic class is a generative one.

4. What a Basic Income for the Arts could look like in Wales

Here is a vision.
We propose a Wales-based pilot scheme: a regular, unconditional payment to practising artists and creative workers, including musicians, writers, visual artists, performers, cultural workers - especially those living with disability, chronic illness, mental‐health conditions, or who face precarity through freelance status.

The payment would not replace all income or benefits, but act as foundation security: a base floor from which the creative person can build. It would recognise that value is not only in the product sold but in the labour of being creative, being vulnerable, being culturally engaged.

Eligibility would emphasise genuine practice, presence in Wales (especially Cardiff and the creative clusters), but also recognise that disability and mental‐health conditions often restrict traditional patterns of work. It would not punish those who can work less - it would enable them to contribute more.

Ideally, it would run for at least three years as a pilot, with an independent evaluation of outcomes: wellbeing, creative output, retention in Wales, financial stability, community benefit. It might be administered in partnership with local creative agencies, arts councils, health/arts wellbeing networks and disability arts organisations.

Wales already has strong foundations: programmes connecting arts and health, creative prescribing, evidence of arts improving wellbeing.

The leap is to shift from incidental support to structural support. A Basic Income for the Arts is structural.

5. How paying artists transforms mental-health and disability outcomes

You don’t have to choose between being sick and being creative. You shouldn’t be forced into that binary. A stable income buffer gives you agency: to rest when you must, to create when you’re able, to build a career when your health allows, to contribute to the culture when your condition allows.

Mental health and art have a deeply reciprocal relationship. Creative expression supports mental wellbeing; the act of producing art can heal, reflect, re-frame trauma.

But when the creative must constantly battle with survival, the healing power of the work is overshadowed by stress.

Disability, likewise, should not be a barrier to artistic contribution. Yet we know the benefits system, the insecure incomes, the discrimination stacked against disabled workers push many talented creatives to the margins. A guaranteed base income means less time spent chasing funding, less time in conveyor-belt freelance jobs, and more time in meaningful creative work.

For someone living with schizophrenia, for example (as I know all too well), the fluctuations of health can be unpredictable. A secure basic income would free us from the tyranny of “Will I pass this benefits test? Can I afford that rehearsal?” We can allocate our energy where it matters: into the album, into the book, into the performance, into the community.

And for the audience, for Cardiff’s cultural landscape, for Wales’s creative brand, this means more music, more literature, more performance, more radical art built from the real lived experiences of identity, of queerness, of mental illness and recovery. It means the creative sphere is not a happy-clappy luxury but a lived, authentic outgrowth of community, struggle and transformation.

6. The economic and social case

This is not just moral; it is strategic. When creatives can sustain themselves, the creative economy grows. Work becomes higher quality; innovation increases; cultural tourism expands; the brand of Wales as a creative hub strengthens.

The savings from improved mental health — less crisis, fewer hospitalisations, fewer drop-outs — may also accrue. 

Arts and health programmes in Wales have already shown benefits in mental wellbeing and cost avoidance.

Why not shift resources upstream: support the creator, prevent the crisis?

Moreover, by embedding artists with lived experience of disability and mental illness into the creative ecosystem, we expand representation, authenticity and reach. The value isn’t just for the artist - it is for society. The saying “Our pain is your entertainment” is a provocation and a truth. By paying artists, we honour that truth.

7. From policy to culture: changing the narrative

We must confront the cultural myth of the “starving artist” - romanticised, accepted, even celebrated. That myth serves those who profit from creative labour without paying fairly. We must move to the reality of “sustainable artist” - valued, paid, enabled.

Let’s reframe: Your mental health matters. Your disability does not disqualify you from contribution. Your creative labour is labour. The culture you produce is infrastructure. The joy you bring to others is not gratis.

When we say “It’s time to pay artists,” we are saying: the economy of culture must shift. We are sowing seeds of a future Welsh society where creatives are embedded, supported, respected. Where Cardiff is not only a music city but a humane city. Where we affirm that to create is to labour, to give is to risk, to perform is to expose one’s self - and thus requires recompense.

8. Your role: as audience, as community, as ally

If you have made it this far, you are likely someone who values culture. Here’s how you can be part of the change.

Pay for art: buy the album, attend the gig, purchase the book, donate to the creator.

Advocate: share this manifesto. Talk to arts organisations, support the idea of Basic Income for the Arts in Wales.

Recognise the labour: when you stream music, read a novel, attend a show - remember the human behind it.

Support inclusive policies: encourage the Welsh Government, arts councils, creative unions to adopt structural support mechanisms.

Honor lived experience: uplift artists with disabilities, mental-health conditions, queer identities, freelancers - champion their voices.

9. A call to Wales, to Cardiff, to you

Cardiff is a city of possibility. A local scene, a global mind. But possibility falters when its actors are marginalized, stressed, unsupported. If we want a future where Welsh culture is thriving, resilient, inclusive - then we must invest in the people who make it.

To every musician in a rehearsal room late at night; to every writer whose manuscript is handwritten in the margins of life; to every performer whose body bears hidden scars and still steps on stage; to every visual artist working through fatigue and illness to bring vision into the world - I see you. I honour you. And I fight for you.

Because our pain is your entertainment. And no one who gives so much should be left invisible. It’s time to pay the artists.

10. Closing: the horizon we see

Imagine a Wales where being a creative is not a gamble with your health and your benefits. Imagine a Wales where disability, illness, mental health challenges are not obstacles but recognised parts of creative identity. Imagine a Wales where artists are part of the economy, not exceptions, not hobbies, not “nice extras”.

That future needs action. It needs policy. It needs investment. It needs you. It needs me. It needs all of us.

So here’s the manifesto: we ask, we insist, we demand - let us be paid fairly for our labour, our vision, our pain, our truth. Let Wales lead the way. Let Cardiff be the proof-point. Let culture be the infrastructure.

Our pain is your entertainment. So pay the artists.