DREAMING
FLOURISHING FUTURES
A BLACK WOMXN’S MANIFESTO FOR
DESIGNING THE WORLDS WE MUST HAVE TO BE WELL
Dreaming Flourishing Futures is a luminous, living collection of declarations, visions, and artifacts that reflect the possibilities we want to bloom in every dimension of our lives. Breathing the future into the present, our manifesto illuminates what will be necessary for us to be well.
Through the sharing and activation of this manifesto, we hope that for Black womxn, to flourish will no longer be a radical notion, no longer a dream space or portal one longs to be pulled through to experience another world. But rather a fully felt and fully experienced reality. From recipes to artifacts, Harriet to Octavia, spirits to chosen communities, we want Black womxn to be fully covered by their wild dreams. To hold a collective declaration of shared futures that name the necessary conditions that will bring it into being.
is a design for wellbeing collective
shaping the future of Black womxn’s
health and healing through creative,
community-led practices.
WHY BLACK WOMXN FLOURISH?
Black womxn’s unique healing histories, perspectives and creative power have always been worthy, essential elements for building the conditions necessary to flourish.
But decisions that deeply impact how we experience wellbeing and define health are being designed without our sacred voices, culture, wisdom and creativity directly shaping what's best for our care.
WE SEE THESE DECISIONS MANIFEST IN OUR LIVED REALITIES AS:
+ Community Health Projects
+ Models of Care
+ Research Studies
+ The Design of Spaces & Places
+ Health Narratives
& Beyond
Because of structural and gendered oppression, racism in health care, alongside white supremacist systems designed to disempower Black creation, our visions for wellbeing have been historically marginalized.
Design and health cultures dominating what it means for Black womxn to be well require a collective transformation — new practices, more possibilities, and radical ways of designing futures for wellbeing.
DESIGN FOR WELLBEING
AN EMERGENT PRACTICE DEVELOPED BY OUR FOUNDING DIRECTOR,
DENISE SHANTÉ BROWN
Design for Wellbeing was birthed out of her creative and collaborative justice work since 2017 to center the wellbeing, wholeness, and imagination of folx who hold marginalized identities, with an unapologetic focus on Black womxn.
Design for Wellbeing is the shared creative process
and practice of bringing experiences for whole, abundant health into existence where pleasure, healing, joy and care are possible.
Our emergent practice is rooted in witnessing that when the design process is community-led and focused on actualizing health and healing, Black womxn have the space to design liberating possibilities that truly align with our needs. Through embodied practices such as celebration, trust, collaboration, and care, Design for Wellbeing builds the conditions for us to journey from collective visions to the creation of futures where we are flourishing by design.
OUR THREE CORE EMBODIMENTS
We’re a community of compassionate imaginaries designing what’s possible for the wellbeing of Black womxn by bringing new visions of a more just, pleasurable and flourishing future into existence. These three embodied affirmations and actions continue to shape who we are and what we do.
CELEBRATING
LIVED EXPERIENCE
+ ABUNDANCE
We exist to affirm and celebrate that Black womxn are experts of their own bodies, health, and needs and have the creative abundance to redefine and design what pleasure, joy, and care looks like in their present and future lives.
Design for the Wellbeing of Black Womxn cohort member radiating joy during a studio ideation session.
TRANSFORMING DESIGN + HEALTH CULTURES
Our creative, community-led practices seek to transform unjust design processes and dominant health cultures that dismiss Black embodied experiences, intuition and collective wisdom.
Participants visioning together on leveraging the power within Black womxn during a collaboration gathering.
TRUSTING
BLACK WOMXN
We believe that when we trust and nourish the inherent value, ingenuity and design leadership of Black womxn, then we can collectively realize a future where we are reclaiming the care for our minds, bodies, souls and spaces.
Session participants designing a vision for sacred space pop-ups and holistic healing retreats.
WHAT’S GUIDING
AND GROUNDING OUR PRACTICE
We’re here for the work and moving with intentionality. Aligned with our emergent practice of Design for Wellbeing, these are our core people and principles inspiring us and keeping us connected to embodying the possibilities.
DESIGN JUSTICE NETWORK
“Design justice rethinks design processes, centers people who are normally marginalized by design, and uses collaborative, creative practices to address the deepest challenges our communities face.”
HEALING BY CHOICE!
“A Healing Justice Practice Space (HJPS) is an all-gender, all-bodied, inclusive, and accessible space for practicing and receiving healing that is built in partnership with social justice movement work and sites of political action. These spaces typically offer a wide variety of health and healing services.”
EMERGENT STRATEGY
“Emergent strategy is a humble philosophy and a way to acknowledge the real power of change. It speaks to practices, responses, visions and plans that embrace complexity, interdependence and transformation.”
We know that as Black womxn our value is inherent, with lineages of boundless brilliance and healing insight, ready for us to co-design our desired futures.
AS BLACK WOMXN DESIGNERS,
WE ARE ALSO HEALERS.
Design is everywhere and we hold the creative power to shape the future of what it truly means for us to be well. In showing up to sustain Black lives, we do this in a way that is holistic, emergent, healing-centric and rooted in deep collaboration.
Intergenerational creative collaboration on what a “Black Health Reimagined” space could look like.
Black Womxn Flourish is dedicated to embodying and practicing collaborative creativity to design with Black womxn. We listen, reimagine pathways to wholeness, illuminate stories and create meaningful experiences that bring us closer to justice and joy.
“Being a part of the experience affirmed how vital it is that Black womxn continue to hold space for each other’s truths. Black womxn designing for wellbeing is equivalent to restorative justice. I want us to continue to encourage and transform the way Black womxn can radicalize design.”
Through the building of liberatory tools, strategies, rituals and resources, we're passionate about cultivating more pleasure and possibility. We bring forth culture-shifting ideas for wellbeing while in loving relationship with our selves, our communities and the natural world.
“Experiencing the session was insightful and gave me the opportunity to imagine ways in which Black women can create alternatives to therapy that can benefit us in our community.”
Cohort members in a creative resilience session with Baltimore & Beyond Mindfulness Community.
Session participant weaving together a representation of interconnected healing, rest, trust and love.
We do this work centering Black womxn* across the class, age, gender and ability spectrum. As a collective we're in solidarity with Queer and Trans Black, Indigenous and People of Color (QTBIPOC) and our supporters who want to see us healing, joyful and well.
*Black Womxn Flourish has and uses "womxn" as an umbrella inclusive to femmes, transgender and gender non-conforming people.
“More Black women designing for more Black women means a transformation of how we think about design and who can design. I see Black women seeing themselves and the wholeness within themselves for the first time.”
OUR OFFERINGS + EXPERIENCES
Working in and with communities, we’re seeding future possibilities
and facilitating healing-centric opportunities to design the worlds we want to flourish in.
Visionary Gatherings for Collective Dreaming and Speculative Thinking
Qualitative Research, Storytelling
and Narrative Shaping
Liberatory Tools, Strategies, Rituals,
and Resources
Design for Wellbeing
Experiences, Courses and Consultations
EXPANDING THE PERSPECTIVE OF WHO CAN AND SHOULD DESIGN FOR WELLBEING
All of our collective projects, offerings and experiences are led by Black womxn and guided by our shared audacity to flourish in the new worlds we create. Our core offerings and experiences create space for collective dreaming, storytelling, the building of liberatory tools and rituals, and opportunities for you to practice and embody bringing whole, abundant health into existence.
FLOURISHING FUTURES
As a new vibrant, visionary gathering space, we’re inviting imaginaries to embody the possibility of a more flourishing future, in our communities and the world. Remembering our past while crafting new realities and strategies to bring into the present, we're collaboratively dreaming, defining, prototyping and sharing what will be necessary for Black womxn to be well.
Launched September 2020 with support from the Black Women and Girls Fund.
Flower prototypes emerging for the vision of more protection, safety and healing for Black womxn.
ROOTED RESEARCH
+ CO-DESIGN STUDIO
We offer a collaborative research and community-led design studio experience working with people, groups and movements to gain deep insights, rewrite health narratives, develop regenerative tools and rituals, and creatively respond to injustices impacting the wellbeing of Black womxn.
One of three synthesis posters generated from our collaborative design process centering the wellbeing of Black women holding anti-racist work.
DESIGN FOR
THE WELLBEING
OF BLACK WOMXN
The first unique program of it’s kind, Design for the Wellbeing of Black Womxn, is a team-based cohort experience for Black womxn to engage in intentional, shared learning about design's role in transforming health injustices. Cohort members journey through an embodied and expansive curriculum to explore holistic, healing-centric practices and cultivate their creative capacity to build and implement tools for resilience, collective care and transformation in their lives and within their communities.
This program was originally launched 2017-2018.
Imaginary session on “Experience Centered Healing” in health care meeting the needs of Black womxn.
MEET THE COLLECTIVE
ROOTED IN BALTIMORE
We’re a design for wellbeing collective made up of Black Womxn Imaginaries co-dreaming and blooming new worlds for health and healing.
Denise Shanté Brown, MA (she/her)
FOUNDING DIRECTOR
+ HOLISTIC DESIGN STRATEGIST
WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM
As a queer disabled entrepreneur, holistic design strategist and creative healer, Denise Shanté brings forth abundant possibilities for wellbeing with Black womxn through collaborative creativity and community-led practices. Her life's work integrates design as a liberatory tool for healing, health, justice and radical imagination.
Precious Diamond Blake
(she/her)
CREATIVE SYNTHESIZER
+ JOY CULTIVATOR
WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM
Precious makes pathways for truth-telling and community resilience by working with arts education leaders, developing professional development for artists and creatives, and creating collaborations that combine her passion for journalism, illustrative archivation, and joyously brave conversations.
Zahni (left) and Maya (right) ideating ideas and creative healing activities for collective team retreat.
COLLECTIVE BUILDING
APPRECIATIONS
Throughout our collective emergence, we’ve had brilliant collaborations with Baltimore creators, Zahni Jackson-Garrett and Maya Bond. Both Maya and Zahni joined for collective building and visioning spring of 2019. During their time with us, they offered insights into capturing stories of Black womxn’s lived experiences in meaningful ways, community gathering possibilities and how Black womxn collectivism can transform both health and design practices.
We’re forever grateful for their wisdom.
The future of health and healing exists
within our next breath and 100+ years from now. It is present in this moment and being designed as we audaciously move toward it with all of our dreams, emotions, histories, curiosities, desires and power.
FLOURISH WITH US
We're growing a compassionate community of practice with creators, healers, researchers, cultural workers, strategists, movement builders and imaginaries to collaboratively shape and nurture the futures we want to see.
BLACK WOMXN, WE’RE LISTENING.
Our offerings and experiences will be shaped by the rising needs, concerns, dreams, and desires of our communities.
We're creating this with you and genuinely want to hear what's emerging for you during this time.
What conversations do you want to have on health and healing?
What dreams and possibilities do you want to design for?
Participants listening to why they’re showing up for Black womxn designing for wellbeing.
“The resilience and evolution of black women is nothing short of futuristic and all-encompassing. We are the soil and the flowers, the map and the destination, the hovercraft and the pilot.”
WAYS YOU CAN NOURISH
+ SUSTAIN OUR PRACTICE
LIKE A DESIGN AND HEALING PROCESS THAT HONORS THE BEAUTY OF EVOLUTION,
BLACK WOMXN FLOURISH IS A LIVING, BREATHING PROTOTYPE.
As we continue to grow, offer experiences, and shape the future of health and healing, your support makes this transformation possible. Your contributions nourish visioning and implementation, the leadership and health care of our Founder, and our Creative Care Fund directly supporting the care and creativity of our core team members helping to sustain the life of this work.
