designing LIBERATORY spaces and experiences where PEOPLE can nurture their
dreams for care, healing and justice into existence.

 
Photographer @jahnschavez, Creative director @z.ahni for @theworkmode

Photographer @jahnschavez, Creative director @z.ahni for @theworkmode

CALL ME Denise Shanté (she/her)

HOLISTIC DESIGN STRATEGIST.
CREATIVE CO-CONSPIRATOR.
INTUITIVE WRITER.

Moment-to-moment, I’m consciously honoring my innate need to create.

In this dimension, I’m currently showing up in the world as a holistic design strategist, creative co-conspirator and intuitive writer. I was born and raised in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia with evolutions in Atlanta and Baltimore, and ancestral lineages throughout Nigerian and Iberian lands.

As the daughter and granddaughter of poets, teachers, community organizers and caregivers, my heartwork lies in designing liberatory spaces and experiences where people can nurture their dreams for care, healing and justice into existence. My practice manifests through multiple forms of expression, including deep listening, community-led design, experience design, facilitation, emergent strategy, personal and organizational guidance, written word, meditative audio talks, and a dynamic range of healing-centric offerings.

I intentionally align myself with movement builders, visionaries, care workers and folks seeking an audacious, regenerative path to design their lives and futures from a place of wellbeing. You’ll witness me embodying this work within—and unbound by—the identities of sobriety, queerness and disability as a type 1 diabetic.

I move with the sacred energy of creative alchemy and collaboration.

Known for being a facilitator of the magical and meaningful, I’m also a published writer of words, maker of booze-free herbal cocktails through Liberatory Libations, previous Steering Committee Member and current Care Pod Lead at the international Design Justice Network, Weaver with the Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry, and the Founding Director of Black Womxn Flourish. With visonary rigor, I take delight in channeling my multi-passionate gifts to guide the process of transformation with groups focused on creative social practice and collective liberation. That pleasure is rooted in 10 years of expanding my perspective of design and bridging design’s relationship to healing, body knowledge, ritual, radical imagination, and possibility.

I learn, unlearn, and then manifest possible portals.

I hold a Master’s degree in Social Design from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) within the Center for Social Design. My institutionalized, educational background of social literacy, design methodologies, and research illuminated a need for me to pursue a different pathway toward a more healing-centric and liberatory practice of design — a practice that is anti-oppressive, grounded in the spirit of Black feminist thought, and bringing breath to the brilliance of those systemically excluded. I approach my work today with a devotion to designing futures with the tender power of care and (re)imagining how we can gather to rest, dream, build, and write new worlds.


Through my practice, I'm intentionally
creating with people who want to...

  • Connect and align ourselves with our deepest values and what expands our hearts the most.

  • Breathe and make space to radically (re)imagine what we want to see and fully experience.

  • Dream, feel, think and create with our whole, intuitive bodies.

  • Build tools, strategies and practices that prioritize care for ourselves, our communities and the earth.

  • Design liberating worlds and ways of being while learning how to work and love in our wholeness.

  • Nourish and reclaim our sacred creativity through radical rest, play, pleasure and reciprocity.


SOME EXPERIENCES ALONG THE WAY

FORMAL EDUCATION

MA Social Design, Maryland Institute College of Art 2017

BFA Graphic Design, The Art Institute of Atlanta 2012

TRAININGS + Community experiences

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

Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute Praxis Cohort 2022

Intro to Herbalism, Hood Herbalism 2021

Embodied Grief Practices, Virtual Care Lab 2021

DC Emergent Strategy Immersion, Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute 2019

Feminist Business School, Sister 2019

Black Diaspora Jam, Yes! 2018

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

recognition & Support

Listen Bar Night Shift Winner, 2020

Baltimore Corps Elevation Awardee, 2018-2019

The Institute for Integrative Health 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

Captured in my home sanctuary by Hannah Shaw, 2019

Captured in my home sanctuary by Hannah Shaw, 2019

 
 
 

ARCHETYPES + TRUTHS

  • Human Design: Manifesting Generator
    Myers-Briggs:
    INFJ
    StrengthsFinder Top 5: Strategic, Input, Intellection, Futuristic, Individualization
    My Current Social Change Ecosystem Roles (by Deepa Iyer): Visionary, Guide, Weaver
    Astrology: Leo Sun, Libra Moon, Scorpio Rising
    My Creative Type: The Innovator

  • I have type 1 diabetes (T1D) and a medical alert tattoo on my right forearm. I was diagnosed in 2013.

  • I love tiny objects! Things that aren’t typically small but were made into tiny versions light me up.

  • I collect feathers from every kind of space, especially while walking, and they hold a spiritual meaning that is connected to my father.

  • One of my favorite Pleasure Dates involves matcha lattes, browsing books, and walking the city for hours.

  • I started writing poetry and keeping journals in the second grade. Writing continues to be a therapeutic form of expression that keeps me centered.

  • I spent a significant amount of my 20’s living in Atlanta, my second home, but grew up in a small town in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

My medical alert tattoo after turning 30 yrs old in 2018.

My medical alert tattoo after turning 30 yrs old in 2018.

  • One of my favorite shows is Issa’s Rae’s, Insecure, and she’s number one on my list of celebrities to hangout with.

  • The word that best describes my work is Possibility. Shifting from problems to reimagining what’s possible is a mindset I’m cultivating and integrating every day.