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Hello
and welcome to my
website.
Though I stopped singing professionally some years ago now, I
haven't stopped 'finding my voice' in other areas (working in arts
management & concert promotion, small business research,
teaching in a business school, and for the last decade in the Arts
and Humanities faculty of King's College London, where I'm
Professor of Culture & Creativity). Over the years, I've made
lots of discoveries. Most recently, I've come to realise that my
work is unified in its underlying focus on what I call 'aesthetic
reason' and 'artful living' (watch my
Inaugural
Lecture
to find
out just what I mean!).
I
regularly upload writings and links to publications, as well as
information about my current research interests and projects. More
details of my work at the Department of Culture, Media &
Creative Industries, King's College London is available on the
CMCI
website.
Please
do get in touch if you would like to collaborate!
Credit: David
Tett
I
am excited to have published my most recent book: The Space that Separates: A Realist Theory of
Art (available to order as hardback or ebook from
Routledge,
Amazon and other on- and off-line bookstores). The official
blurb is below - but suffice it to say, this is a book that seeks
to get at what art is (from a critical realist
perspective) and which is motivated by the belief that we can, and
should, open ourselves to living 'artfully'. This is all
the more important as the reality of the climate emergency
confronting everyone of us becomes daily more
evident.
"The Space that Separates: A Realist Theory of Art radically challenges our assumptions about what art is, what art does, who is doing it, and why it matters. Rejecting the modernist and market-driven misconception that art is only what artists do, Wilson instead presents a realist case for living artfully. Art is defined as the skilled practice of giving shareable form to our experiences of being-in-relation with the real; that is to say, the causally generative domain of the world that extends beyond our direct observation, comprising relations, structures, mechanisms, possibilities, powers, processes, systems, forces, values, ways of being. In communicating such aesthetic experience we behold life’s betweenness – "the space that separates", so coming to know ourselves as connected."
Providing the first dedicated and comprehensive account of art and aesthetics from a critical realist perspective – Aesthetic Critical Realism (ACR), Wilson argues for a profound paradigm shift in how we understand and care for culture in terms of our system(s) of value recognition. Fortunately, we have just the right tool to help us achieve this transformation – and it’s called art. Offering novel explanatory accounts of art, aesthetic experience, value, play, culture, creativity, artistic truth and beauty, this book will appeal to a wide audience of students and scholars of art, aesthetics, human development, philosophy and critical realism, as well as cultural practitioners and policy-makers.
The Palgrave Handbook of Creativity at Work
is
co-edited with my colleague and friend Lee Martin. It is comprised
of 30 chapters which explore the subject from a diverse set of
perspectives. As I outline in the final chapter's synthesis of
ideas, I believe that the handbook offers a genuinely new,
constructive (albeit challenging) way of thinking about creativity
(at work) as a structured practice of care. Chapters are available
to download here.
Entries I've written on "authenticity", "early music", and "Werktreue" are included in this new comprehensive encyclopedia of historical performance in music (2018).
.
I was honoured that my article "What's the problem? Cultural capability and learning from Historical Performance" features in this inaugural edition of Historical Performance (2018). For more details click here.
Towards Cultural Democracy: Promoting
Cultural Capabilities report launched, June 21st, 2017.
Downloadable
here.
This
research report with Jonathan Gross examines the cultural
eco-systems of Creative
People and Places projects and offers new ways to understand
what place-based programmes can seek to achieve in the long term.
The report also sets out some important considerations for the
development of flourishing cultural eco-systems.
Download your copy
here.
Caring for Cultural Freedom: An Ecological
Approach to Young People's Cultural Learning, launched
October 31st, 2017. Downloadable here.
Huffington Post article (24th May, 2017) by Tony Woodcock discusses the 'Entrepreneurship in Music' conference in Oslo, Norway in April, 2017, in which I gave the opening Keynote.
As
a conflation of the words ‘creativity’ and ‘if’ (as in
‘what if?’), creatifity carrys with it an aspirational
message about human creativity that is imaginative, emancipatory,
and value-positive. This is a message that informs my approach
to creativity research and practice.
“Creativity requires the courage to let go of
certainties”
Erich
Fromm
Contact: info@creatifity.com
Copyright 2020 (c)
Google Scholar: Nick Wilson