dreaming, designing, writing, and feeling the futures we long for and love.

call me
denise shanté
(she/her)

MULTIDIMENSIONAL DESIGNER
CREATIVE CO-CONSPIRATOR
INTUITIVE WRITER

Birthed from a lineage of poets, artists, teachers, community organizers, and caregivers,

my design practice is naturally multidimensional, creating itself through many expressions as an ode to freedom. These experiments come with an inherent desire to weave more caring and liberating ways of being, sensing, relating, and making into our lives and work. They may take the form of storytelling technologies, worldmaking, experience design, care-centric guidance, creative self-practice, and intimate communities. They call on our sensorial knowledge and trusted dreams. They invite us to illuminate and (re)shape the politic from which we create.

As a Black, queer, and disabled woman, I come with lifetimes of body knowledge and visionary rigor. I’m devoted to change and love co-conspiring to nurture new worlds into existence that (re)connect us with the expansive layers of ourselves, our more-than-human worlds, and our commitments. Care, intimacy and liberation are throughlines across my work, creating moments for us to collectively dream, design, write, and feel the futures we long for and love.

I’ve recently experimented with how the lineages of care and healing justice might shape the way we design more just, community-led worlds as Care Pod Lead at Design Justice Network. Other lineages of cross-movement collaborations include being a Weaver with the Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry, the Founding Steward of Black Womxn Flourish, Advisor for design research projects with Healthy Teen Network, and member of the liberatory writing community, at Louis Place. I’ve also created and taught design justice sessions and modules through MICA’s MA Social Design program and now facilitate my own experiences on ritual design, creative lineages, and care-centric praxis.

This season of life also involves me writing across various literary forms, generating inquiries, deepening in generative somatics, and studying the transnational, migratory lives of Black artists and cultural workers who’ve practiced belonging, self-determination, and solidarity.

Moving with nothing less than love, I’m continually extending tenderness to my body while navigating this earthbound place with chronic illness and a commitment to sobriety. I take delight in curating playlists, communing with nature, designing home spaces as sanctuaries, watching stand-up comedy clips, and being a student of ceramics, eco printing, and printmaking.

As a future ancestor with an innate need to create more possibilities,

The cycles of learning and
unlearning are ever present

as I hold a Master's degree in Social Design from Maryland Institute College of Art’s Center for Social Design. Enduring this institutionalized, academic experience illuminated the need for me to recover from oppressive, capitalistic design education structures and be unapologetic in my commitment to a more liberatory practice of design. That liberatory design practice is interdependent, grounded in the spirit of Black feminist thought, and dedicated to design being a continual, embodied process of care.

practices I am
weaving

These practices are in ongoing relationship and learning with Black feminism, radical imagination, disability justice, generative somatics, and nature-connectedness.

design
justice

(re)imagining one’s relationship to design processes and weaving creative, collaborative practices that are always led by the lived experience and abundant creativity of those who are strategically marginalized.

my living definition

healing
justice

a political-spiritual framework that aims to interrupt and transform historical cycles of violence and trauma within our communities.

defined by the National Queer & Trans
Therapists of Color Network

emergent
strategy

a framework for resistance that is rooted in the miracles of nature, decentralized, collective leadership, and personal, relational, organizational, and movement-wide transformation.

defined by Andrea J. Ritchie

sensuous
knowledge

a spiritual, combined approach to knowledge that involves not only the mind and the intellect, but also feeling, the senses, art, dreams, embodiment, spirit, the idea of oneself as part of a larger whole, and the idea of knowledge as a living entity.

coined and defined by Minna Salami

my current

intersecting identities

Name & Pronouns: Denise Shanté
(both names together, she/her)
Age: 35-40 range
Nationality, Race & Ancestry: US born, Black with ancestral lineages from Nigerian and Iberian lands
Sexual Orientation: Queer, Pansexual
Gender Identity: Cisgender woman
Ability: Invisible disability and chronic illness known as type 1 diabetes
Marital Situation: No desire to get married or have children. Cats and life partners are great though :)
Language: English speaking with ongoing Spanish language learning
Spirituality/Religion: Non Religious but hold spiritual practices
Education: Undergrad and Masters degree (with predatory student loans)
Class: Raised on low-income assistance programs. Self-employed (since 2016). Single income.
Housing: Secure housing 
I don't really believe "secure" housing exists as long as landlords exist and as long as they continue to perpetuate the commodification of housing while practicing predatory behavior.

Family: Born to teen parents in a small Virginia town in the Shenandoah Valley.

Mother who has a creative expression of company management and she’s an Aries Sun.

Father who creatively expressed himself through art, poetry, architecture, and teaching as a GED educator—also an Aries Sun. He transitioned due to a brain aneurysm in the corrupt prison system, at the age of 31, during a thirty-year sentence.

Also in beloved memory—My paternal Granny (Levis Denise Brown) who expressed her creativity by being a singer, home daycare provider for over 30 years, caregiver, and community organizer. She was a Pisces Sun with a lot of Leo in her chart. She transitioned due to the horrors of Covid-19 at age 64.

skills & gifts that
light me up inside

  • Project & Practice Guidance

  • Creative & Intuitive Writing

  • Storytelling 

  • Meditative Talks

  • Co-Dreaming & Designing

  • Inquiry Creations

  • Community Facilitation

  • Experience Design

  • Ritual Design

  • Program Design & Stewardship

  • Experimentation & Prototyping

  • Qualitative Research

background

formal education

  • MA Social Design, Maryland Institute College of Art 2017

  • BFA Graphic Design, The Art Institute of Atlanta 2012

a few current & past roles

  • Design Advisor & Subject Matter Expert, Healthy Teen Network, 2024 - Present

  • Weaver, Center for Liberatory Practice and Poetry, 2022 - Present

  • Founding Steward, Black Womxn Flourish,
    2017 - Present

  • Care Pod Lead and Steering Committee Member, Design Justice Network, 2020-2024

  • Curriculum Designer & Instructor, MICA Center for Social Design Graduate Module, “Design as a Pathway to Justice”, 2021

  • Community Design Researcher, Baltimore Clayworks, 2019

  • Program Designer, Baltimore City Health Department, 2016 - 2017

  • Co-facilitator of the Decatur Imagining,
    U.S. Department of Arts & Culture, 2015

trainings & courses taken

  • Meeting Our Griots: Sobonfu Somé — Remembering the Foundations of Intimate Community Through African Literature, curated by Keren Lasme with Ijeruka 2023


  • Building Communities to Meet Crisis: Resourcing our Relationships, Institute for the Development of Human Arts 2023

  • Anti-Oppression Facilitation, AORTA’s Facilitate for Freedom Fundamentals Training 2023

  • Intro to Herbalism, Hood Herbalism 2021

  • Embodied Grief Practices, Virtual Care Lab 2021


  • Feminist Business School, Sister 2019

  • Emotionally Intelligent Leadership & Social Justice-Informed Mental Health, BEAM 2017


  • Mental Health First Aid, Mosaic Community Services 2017

  • Compassionate Activism: Responding to Everyday Oppression with Love and Justice, Everyday Feminism 2016

practice-based experiences

  • Soma Social Justice Practice Community,
    2024 to present

  • Strategy Clinic for Black Disabled Movement Workers, PeoplesHub, 2024 to present

  • Safer Movements Collective Summer Cohort, 2024

  • Seed A World Retreat, Seeda School 2024


  • On Healing: Somatic Practice Group, 2024

  • Spiritual Activism: Politicizing the Spiritual, Spiritualizing the Political, Courage of Care 2024

  • Creative Practice as Social Engagement: A Weeklong Workshop Exploring Creative Work, Community and Care in Oaxaca, Pocoapoco 2023


  • Praxis Projects Cohort, Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute 2022


  • Wellness & Healing Justice Jam, Yes! 2021


  • Washington DC Emergent Strategy Immersion, Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute 2019


  • Black Diaspora Jam, Yes! 2018


  • Southern Jam, Yes! 2015


awards & fellowships

  • Listen Bar Night Shift Winner for Liberatory Libations, 2020

  • Baltimore Corps Elevation Awardee, 2018-2019


  • Nature Sacred Fellow, 2017-2019


  • Robert W. Deutsch Social Design Fellow 2017-2018


  • Fred Lazarus Leadership for Social Change Award, 2017


  • Leslie King-Hammond Graduate Award, 2016

archetypes

  • Human Design: Manifesting Generator

  • Deepa Iyer’s Social Change Ecosystem Roles: Visionary, Storyteller, Guide


  • Astrology Big 3: Leo Sun, Libra Moon, Scorpio Rising

present and past co-conspirators

Safer Movements Collective. Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry. Design Justice Network. PressPress. Virtual Care Lab. Healthy Teen Network. Allied Media Projects. Maryland Institute College of Art. Center for Social Design. We Here, The Community School. Hue Design Summit. School of Visual Arts. Harvard Black in Design. Arts Every Day. Baltimore Collegetown. Nature Sacred. Baltimore Clayworks. Baltimore City Health Department. U.S. Department of Arts and Culture. Southern Center for Human Rights.

Denise Shanté designs the moments that make change possible, moments to build a communal understanding of care as an essential practice for collective liberation.

She connects these practices on a continuum through time and space, linking experiences as they emerge to their past lineages and possible futures, narrating their arc through multi-sensory storytelling: prose, song, movement, flavor, scent, memory, spirit. Collaborating with her invites me to experience my craft as an extension of my fully embodied self, and as an expression of my connection to community.

—Rene Joy, Freelance Writer, Designer,
and Organizer