Desiree Bashi is a professional linguist, intercultural writer, illustrator, and author of Sekuru & the Girl with Her Leaf” and “Dancing with your Eyes”. Her books have been presented in universities, bookshops, schools and libraries.
Passionate in blending intercultural awareness with languages, storytelling, visual arts, and dance she leads workshops all over the country to encourage everyone to take their stories, mother tongues and cultural identity from their heart to their mouth and beyond for everyone to cherish and celebrate.
Desiree is also a dancer trained in Classical South Asian dance Odissi and has performed at South Bank London, in various Libraries in London, museums and schools including the Bedford Higgins Museum, The Place Theatre, The Black Archive Museum and St Mary’s Church in Walthamstow as part of project reviving unused spaces in the borough.
Desiree earned her MA in Applied Linguistics in 2015 her thesis, an analysis of underrepresented languages in the current literature leading to material development published in Shona, a language spoken in Northern Zimbabwe and Italian.
A finalist for “I am a Woman and This is My legacy” an art exhibition funded by the Mayor of London Sadie Khan in Barking and Dagenham where Desiree combined her artwork with her dance.
Artist Statement
“Authenticity is a universal language”, that’s what my mother always told me, usually when I was trying to
carve my way while growing up in a mixed race family. As someone that grew up in an intercultural
environment I care about of all the facets of identity and always have by writing, illustrating and learning
languages with the aim of raising intercultural awareness. I enjoy delivering a variety of workshops in
multilingual creative writing, storytelling and dance. I learned not only to write, develop and deliver content for workshops and sharpened my expertise in languages and art, but I learned how to adapt content for diverse audiences and most importantly I learned the importance of giving voice to every single one. Then with the explosion of digital means, I started to create more intercultural illustrations and characters for online publications while learning how to combine different art material with the use of digital tools. Identity awareness isn’t just about your country of origin, it’s about languages, history, memories, the life and people we left and the ones we have embraced” – Desiree