Dan Wilson

I am a theatre performer, movement practitioner, educator, and parent artist. I trained in the UK, Malta, and Greece, and have worked on performance projects and interdisciplinary collaborations in Europe and the UK for the past 15 years. My creative practice is informed by contemporary performance devising. The work is physical, visual and poetic; it shifts between presence and representation, layers mythologies with true stories and looks for surprising uses of movement, sound and objects. My current creative work focuses on the natural world, ecology and outdoor arts. In my research and projects, I look for meaningful ways to weave the natural world into my movement language, choreographies and performance artworks.

I am an artist living on the edge of The New Forest. I use folklore, folksong, old customs, games and rituals to explore contemporary issues particularly social and economic disparity. Country living can be a strange mix of bounty and hopelessness but when people have access to their own strong and sinuous roots, their own history and stories they have anchorage and hope. I seek the stories that connect us and as an artist I’m thinking of different ways of pinning them up on the metaphorical village hall notice board for all to see. Alongside my own practice I run drawing workshops as The Village Hall Draw and community workshops around the New Forest working with Culture in Common and Hampshire Cultural Heritage amongst others.

My debut novel, The Normal State of Mind (Parthian, 2015) was long listed for the Mumbai Association of Moving Images (MAMI) Word to Screen Prize. Table Manners (Dahlia Books, 2018) won the Saboteur Award for Best Short Story Collection in 2019. My short stories have been featured on BBC Radio 4. I develop and deliver writing workshops for various art galleries and organisations around Hampshire and beyond. I teach creative writing at University of Winchester and am a trustee of The Winchester Poetry Festival. I’ve also developed ands teach a short story course for Professional Writing Academy. I’m co-founder of Write Beyond Borders, a transnational mentoring project writers from South Asia and its diaspora.