Nick Broad is arguably the world’s leading busking expert. A passion for documenting the art form led to a round-the-world film trip in 2011, when he filmed and interviewed street performers in 30 countries on 5 continents. The result was a coffee table book (which sold out its thousand-print run), hundreds of YouTube videos with millions of views, and “The Busking Project CIC”, a nonprofit devoted to solving the technological needs of street performers, which he co-founded with his wife, Liliana Maz. Their website, busk.co, is used daily by over a thousand street performers worldwide to collect tips during street shows (and will be part of the marketing plan for this book).

Over the last two decades, Broad has: launched buskers.guide, a living archive of street performance that gets the world’s busking activists and advocates working together; presented his own research into busking policy at a UN Habitat conference aimed at urbanists; helped advocates with legal battles over the right to busk in public spaces in Berlin, Boston, Galway, London, Melbourne, New York and multiple other cities; and had his writing and work has been covered in publications like the BBC, ITV, CNN, the Economist, Wall Street Journal, Guardian, NME and dozens of other publications.

Broad did a degree in Creative Writing at the New School, and was the deputy editor of the 12th Street Journal, its literature journal. He went on to work as an educational writer at Channel Thirteen, a journalist at a small local newspaper in Manhattan, and then as a freelance writer and founding member of the 23rd Street Salon, and now runs the Berlin Nonfiction Circle. He lives in Berlin with his wife and their dog, Pisco.

His first book, on the history and future of busking, is being submitted in early 2026.