Project Fellow
Email: aisha@intelligentmischief.com

Aisha Shillingford, is an anti-disciplinary artist, world builder, designer and cultural strategist originally from Trinidad & Tobago. She is the Artistic Director of Intelligent Mischief, a creative studio unleashing Black imagination to shape the future. She is an alumna of Laundromat Project’s Creative Change Fellowship, a member of the New Museum Incubator, and an inaugural Fellow at the Race Forward Butterfly Lab for Immigrant Narrative Strategy. Her written work has been published in Black Discourse and Grantmakers In the Arts. Her collage work has been commissioned by the Movement for Black Lives, Root Rise Pollinate and Creative Wild Fire and licensed by Nonprofit Quarterly and the Center for Third World Organizing.

She has a BA in Environmental Analysis & Policy, an MSW in Social Innovation, and an MBA in Social Entrepreneurship. She has studied Graphic Design, Futures Design, Design Fictions, Design Thinking and Street Wear Design. She has been a Lead Community Organizer at the Muslim American Society Boston Chapter, and at Close To Home DV Prevention Agency, Director of Racial & Economic Justice at the New Economy Coalition, Senior Associate at Interaction Institute for Social Change and Deputy Director of Innovation Strategy at Movement Strategy Center. She loves sewing, cooking, and riding bikes.

Her collage, text-based work, installation and experiential design work conjures Black utopias, imagination, solidarity economics, marronage and dreamspace. She draws on themes of fugitivity, opacity and afrosurrealism.