Collaborations
Norman Bissell has collaborated with musicians Margaret Bennett, Aidan O’Rourke, Lori Watson, Mark Sheridan, Mairi Macinnes and Liz Lane; with visual artists Jacqui Jones, Janey Devine and Steve Pardue with whom he provided poems and other text for interpretation panels on the Oban seafront, at the Islay Chaluim Chille Centre and for the Oban to Fort William Sustrans route. He worked with choreographer Claire Pencak, archaeologists and filmmakers at the Pier Arts Centre, Orkney in 2011.

Parts of his short film Love the Isle of Luing were selected for the We Are Northern Lights documentary film directed by Nick Higgins and he shared its Best Ambassador award in 2012. He set up and led the Open World Poetics discussion group in Glasgow 1989-1999 and is director of the trans-disciplinary Scottish Centre for Geopoetics 2002 - present.

Performances
He has performed his work at An Tobar, Mull, Seil Island Hall, the Corran Halls and Argyllshire Gathering Halls, Oban, and at the Moray Art Centre. He has also read and spoken at many festivals and cultural events including Celtic Connections, Changin’ Scotland, the Nairn Book and Arts Festival, Glasgow’s Aye Write Book Festival, Edinburgh’s Ceilidh Culture, the Belladrum Festival, the Festival of the Sea, the Bookends Festival, the Oban Winter Festival, the Atlantic Islands Festival, the Edinburgh Independent Radical Book Fair, the Sorley MacLean Centenary Conference, the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Taproot: Lismore Music and Literature Festival in 2017 and 2019, StAnza International Poetry Festival 2017, Islay Book Festival 2019 and Wigtown Book Festival 2019.

Education
He has an MA (Hons) degree in philosophy and history from the University of Glasgow, is a former principal teacher of history and Area Officer of the Educational Institute of Scotland, the largest teachers' trade union in Scotland. He has lectured at St Andrew’s College of Education, the University of Glasgow, the University of the Highlands and Islands, the University of the West of Scotland and at the University of Edinburgh Office of Lifelong Learning. In 2010 he was awarded the Fellowship of the Educational Institute of Scotland in the special category ‘for signal service to education.’

Community
He has lived on the Isle of Luing in Argyll since 2007 and was Vice-Chairman of the Isle of Luing Community Trust and Events Convener until February 2017. He helped to raise £1.3 million funding to build the Atlantic Islands Centre as a community hub, heritage and arts centre on Luing which opened in May 2015 and won two national awards and one Argyll and Bute award in 2016.