Nick Wilson joined CMCI in 2009. He was previously Principal Lecturer in Small Business Management and Entrepreneurship at Kingston University. Nick studied music at Clare College, Cambridge, singing at the Royal College of Music, London and the Hochschule der Künste, Berlin, subsequently working as a freelance musician. Nick has published widely on art, creativity, culture and cultural policy, early music, authenticity and historical performance, as well as small business management and entrepreneurship. As part of Horizon 2020-funded Developing Inclusive and Sustainable Creative Economies (DISCE) research, Nick led a work package on rethinking growth in creative economies. Between 2020-2023 he was Head of Department of CMCI. During the COVID pandemic, he launched research on cultures of care. In his 2020 book The Space that Separates: A Realist Theory of Art (Routledge) Nick introduces ‘aesthetic critical realism’ which challenges widely-held assumptions about what art is, what art does, who is doing it, and why it matters. Making a case for ‘living artfully’, attention is focused on how we experience the world. This is the backdrop to his current research – a series of planned publications exploring different ways of knowing and, in particular, acknowledging our humanity – what it is like to be human.

Research Interests and PhD Supervision

• Humanity (what it is like to be) and ways of knowing (not knowing, transrational knowing, unknowing, experiencing)
• Aesthetic critical realism (and critical realism more widely)
• Art-based learning and education (especially art based research and methods)
• Cultural development (the expansion of people’s freedoms to acknowledge our humanity) and ‘cultures of care’
• Curiosity studies (especially wonder)

For more details, please see Nick’s full research profile.

Teaching

Nick’s teaching is strongly influenced by his ongoing research. Nick founded the MA Arts & Cultural Management in 2014 at King's College London and played a leading role in the development of the BA Culture, Media & Creative Industries that launched in 2020. He currently teaches modules relating to creativity (with particular emphasis on the experience of being creative), caring (in the context of arts and culture), and reconciling these aspects with the pragmatics, problematics, and opportunities of arts and cultural management. Nick supervises students at all levels. In recent years he has specialised working with PhD students engaged in art based research projects and methods.

Expertise and Public Engagement

Nick is a Board member of the Centre for Critical Realism (CCR) which has editorial responsibility for the Routledge Studies in Critical Realism series. He is an Associate Member of the Small Business Research Centre (Kingston Business School).

Nick’s personal website is www.creatifity.com

Selected Publications

• Comunian, R., Faggian, A., Heinonen, J. and N. Wilson (2022) A Modern Guide to Creative Economies. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
• Stokes, D. and Wilson, N. (2021) Small Business Management & Entrepreneurship. Andover. Cengage.
• Wilson, N. (2020) The Space that Separates: A Realist Theory of Art. Abingdon: Routledge.
• Martin, L. and Wilson, N. (Eds.) (2018) The Palgrave Handbook of Creativity at Work, London: Palgrave.
• Wilson, N. (2014) The Art of Re-enchantment: Making Early Music in the Modern Age. Oxford & USA: Oxford University Press.