If we truly desire and believe in the values, practices, and principles we’ve set for ourselves, we need to rehearse them now, and not wait for these visions to magically take shape in some distant, unknown timescape.
Denise Shanté Brown (she/her) is a queer and disabled multidimensional designer, creative co-conspirator and intuitive writer. She was born and raised in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia with evolutions in Atlanta and Baltimore, and ancestral lineages throughout Nigerian and Iberian lands.
Birthed from a lineage of poets, teachers, community organizers, and caregivers, her heartwork lies in creating moments where people can dream and design more possibilities for care, intimacy, and liberation. Denise Shanté's practice manifests through multiple forms of expression that come with the inherent desire to weave more liberating ways of being, sensing, and making into our lives and work. These expressions currently take the form of creative writings, cultural change, experience design, guidance, and holding space for kinship across difference and beyond borders.
She’s currently experimenting 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 cross-movement collaborations include being a weaver with the Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry, the founding steward of Black Womxn Flourish, and a member of At Louis Place, a home that facilitates the liberation of imagination through writing.
This season of life also involves her writing across various literary forms, deepening in generative somatics, and studying the transnational, migratory lives of Black creatives and cultural workers who’ve practiced belonging, self-determination, and solidarity. Returning to nothing less than love throughout each season, she’s continually extending tenderness to her body while navigating this earthbound place with chronic illness and a commitment to sobriety.