All theatre-makers have to navigate a sector built on unpaid opportunities, low pay and the increasing lottery of arts funding. This combination of high risk and low reward routinely excludes people from poorer backgrounds. But it also affects mid-career artists too. In my own work with artists in the north-east of England, I’ve known talented, experienced theatre-makers who have stopped making work because they can no longer take the risk of not knowing if they can sustain their families. I’ve seen bright, enthusiastic students and emerging artists walk away from theatre when they realise just how little those artists hailed as success stories actually earn.

This matters, not because artists are owed a living, but because culture is a reflection of the society in which we live, and if great swaths of that society are barred from having a creative life and artistic voice, then all of us are the poorer for it. Is it any wonder that audiences roughly reflect the demographics of those who are able to enter the profession? There’s not much point hanging a big welcome sign above the box office if the stage door is clearly barred to anyone without a financial safety net.

This isn’t a problem exclusive to the arts. It’s true of many professions including law, politics and journalism; professions that have a significant influence on the way in which our society understands and governs itself. The arts must seek ways to make the profession more accessible to everyone, but those who ask why the arts should be a special case regarding a safety net do have a point. Why focus our energies on constructing an exclusive safety net for artists, when a universal safety net is required to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to fulfil their potential?

Of course, that safety net is supposed to exist already, in the form of the welfare state, but that currently hangs just inches off the ground and is increasingly full of holes. Which begs the question – are there alternatives to the UK’s welfare system that could increase the opportunity for all citizens, including artists, to reach their full potential?

In its election manifesto, the Green party offered one alternative in the form of the citizen’s income. This would see every UK resident aged over 18 receive £80 a week regardless of whether they are in work or not. This would replace most benefits and tax credits but would be supplemented for certain people. It isn’t a fortune, but it would provide everyone with a minimum guaranteed income of £4,160 a year with no risk of sanction or application delay. Changes in income tax mean it wouldn’t make people very much richer overall, but it would fix the holes in the safety net and lift it a little further from the ground.

The Danish system of Flexicurity is built on a golden triangle: flexible rules for hiring and firing, making it easy for companies to expand and contract, unemployment security in the form of a guarantee of unemployment benefit of up to 90% of salary for the lowest-paid workers, and an active labour market policy that offers guidance, a job or education to all those who are unemployed. This has a direct impact not only on the sustainability of livelihoods but particularly on the arts. It is entirely acceptable to rehearse while receiving unemployment benefit because it is viewed as an active route to employment, so it’s not unusual for shows to be in rehearsal for two or three months, leading to the rigour, creativity and precision that makes Danish children’s theatre among the most groundbreaking and very best in the world.

In France there has long been a system exclusively for artists, the “intermittents du spectacle”. Once an artist has qualified by working 507 paid hours over 10 months each year, they receive a higher rate of benefit, based on income in the gaps between employment. The system is based on the principle that work in the arts is often intermittent but that artists need always to be at the top of their game, constantly honing their skills through training or unpaid work rather than waiting tables. This too has an impact on the nature of the art – French theatre is renowned for high levels of physical skill made possible by constant training and development. The problem with the intermittent du spectacles is that it is exclusive and when times are hard, as they are at the moment, it comes under threat. It sets up a dynamic of artists vs everyone else that’s not helpful for anyone.

Artists reflect society, both in the work they make and the lives they live. Just now, in the UK that reflection shows a society in which the freedom to take the risks required to fulfil potential is reserved for those who can afford it. Everyone, including artists, deserves better than that.