My work lies at the intersections of culture, healing, and media.
She who speaks
Shiann Croft (she/her) is a Toronto-based storyteller, digital creative, and emerging journalist using media as a portal for truth-telling, memory work, and community care. Her work moves through the worlds of film, performance, and digital strategy—centering Black voices, cultural legacy, and collective healing.
She’s the founder of The Coven—a digital media collective and creative wellness space for Black women, femmes, and gender-expansive folks reclaiming story, spirit, and space. Through short-form video, social campaigns, and community education, Shiann blends artistry with intention to uplift the voices often left out of the archive.
From gallery walls to grassroots programs to national platforms, Shiann’s work honors the past while creating space for what’s next. Her storytelling lives in the in-between—where media becomes medicine, and movement becomes memory. She’s a 2022 Ontario Arts Council Recommender Grant recipient, former Artist-in-Residence with Pat The Dog Theatre’s Creation, and the 2025 Toronto Arts Council Caring Cultures Fellow. Her work lives at the intersection of culture, care, and creative innovation—and always centers her people.
Collaboration + Community Work
Beyond and in addition to being a educator, philanthropist, and poet:
I moderate panels
Develop curricula to decolonize classrooms + school boards
Lead, host + Facilitate training programs + wellness retreats
Collaborate with colleges + wellness brands + private organizations + community-based initiatives within Africa + the Diaspora
Offer 1:1 Coaching
And more!
The Calling & The Coven
During the fall of 2020, I spent ten intense months on a personal healing journey, exploring Afro-Indigenous based healing modalities. In this period of reclamation, depression, transformation and deep listening, I heard a call that would shift the trajectory of my work.
“Create a Queendom for your tribe”
Were the instructions placed in my heart and so - in true wild woman fashion - I conjured all my strengths + weaknesses, went off into seclusion and birthed a revolution. The Coven is a global platform and digital wellness space that centers the voices + unique experiences of women and femmes. It is a virtual QUEENDOM & resting space for wild women to gather + decolonize wellness + explore sensuality + practice sisterhood & reclaim freedom through movement, dance, poetry, plant medicine and rebellion.
Each week, a series of workshops, healing circles, self-love rituals and discussions around holistic wellness is facilitated by myself, featured educators, wellness coaches, practitioners, herbalists, and doulas.
In the Beginning
“Its the year 0693AD, and she misplaced her crown somewhere along the journey of getting lost. So she retraces her steps, and goes back into the forest of lost things”
The Legend of Sincerely - Shyy
I used to be so afraid of being myself. Afraid of being Black + girl and hella magic. I was scared of being in my power, and operating within my gifts. Was I enough? Was I doing to much?
One day in the summer of 2021, I packed up all my sh*t and went to the ‘inner world of lost little girls’ and there I did hella healing. I lit 7 white candles and recited Psalms from The Old Testament. I reclaimed my fears + went into hiding + I explored my identity. And yet, after all of that I realized that the identities I held were not even true to who I was, instead just some of my many facets.
After all that I realized - my voyage truly begins where I enter a state rooted in flow, passion and purpose: To heal myself and others. This is sincerely Shyy.
“We would run around the halls, us little girls, our books, and our joy.”
— Sincerely Shyy
Inspiring Young Activists
I remember falling in love with writing in Grade Three. My English teacher, Mr Thompson loved loved loved art, and hung paintings around the classroom. He would have us write stories about these paintings. So, therein began my love with writing. I really have been blessed to have teachers who were great educators throughout my younger ages of development, middle school and high school.
Such as Miss Steele -my English teacher in Grade 6. She knew that I loved social justice because she’d always see it in my work. I remember her saying “One day, your work will get published”.
During the time I was in Miss Steele’s classes, there were a group of boys who were very mean to me, and one of them put his hand down my shirt. He ended up getting suspended. However, the response that had the most profound impact on me was Miss Steele’s. She decided to create an empowerment club for the girls, and asked if I would be her sidekick. She booked a speaker named Motion, a female lyricist rapper, to come through and talk about lyricism. Fast-forward to 2020, I’m volunteering at a space, and who pulls up? …Motion!
You see, I’ve just always had these moments during my lifetime, of falling in love with literature & language over and over and over again. It is beautiful to recognize the symmetry, influence and significance of these moments.
Motion is now an award winning playwright, with a prestigious black theatre in Toronto. I too am a playwright. I tell stories as vivid as the paintings on Mr Thompson’s wall. I create space to educate, heal + uplift black girls, women + femmes, just like Miss Steele. My words are medicine + activism.
“I create spaces where radical conversation + healing through writing intersect”
— Sincerely Shyy
Creating space for inner child healing + radical conversation
At the core of my shadow-work is my own inner child healing. When I lean into my light, I remember being a young girl, living in the hood. I remember the library up the street from me. I vividly recall the librarians doing puppet shows that my cousin and I would attend -we would run around the halls, us little black girls and our books and our joy. This is the space where I would fall in love with storytelling. And so, my work today reflects this; I create spaces where radical conversation + healing through writing intersect.
Photo of Shyy facilitating at SACRED: A conversation on Black women’s mental health, in collaboration with Adornment Stories
“My Words are my Medicine.
My Poetry is My Activism.”
Listen In
Watch Shyy & TedX speaker Malikah Awe:ri in this episode of ‘Pussy Talks’ - The IG Live Series + space where radical conversations + poetry intersect.
‘A Message To Your 27 Year Old Self’ - Watch Shyy & Tanya Turton a.k.a @trapmystic have a poetic conversation in this episode of ‘Pussy Talks’ - The IG Live Series + space for radical conversations + poetry rendezvouz.
‘How Do Black Men Say I Love You’ - Watch Shyy interview DJ a.k.a @thefirstarchitect as he shares his fears and vulnerabilities about choosing to love and be in love
Watch this snippet of Sincerely Shyy’s poetry performance at the 20th anniversary of the annual event ‘When Sisters Speak’ - led by Dwayne Morgan.
Collaborate With Me
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Curriculum Building
I develop curricula to decolonize classrooms + school boards. Learn how I can help you elevate your classroom
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Facilitation + Speaking
In need of a speaker, facilitator, or performer who speaks + teaches poetry, prophecy and liberation?
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Coaching
I help educators, healers and spiritual practitioners steepen their practice in blackness, + storytelling