Anita Shervington

Anita Shervington is a Birmingham-based community engagement strategist whose work connects people to science, culture, ideas—and to each other—while helping others to do the same. Her background spans maternal nutrition and health development, women’s civic leadership, cultural heritage, and out-of-school programming.

Through fellowships from the Wellcome Trust and Churchill Travelling Fellowship, she travelled to the USA, Canada, and Guyana to explore community-led approaches to building ‘Science Capital’ through arts, culture, and philanthropy.

Anita is the founder of BLAST, a pop-up festival and engagement platform that fuses the power of science, arts, and Black culture to drive social, economic, and environmental change.

With a mission to build science, cultural, and creative capital in Black communities at scale, BLAST’s initiatives are intentionally multigenerational. These include Black STEAM Futures, paid fellowships for Black artists, organisers and storytellers, and themed Issue Labs that facilitate collaboration between artists, scientists, activists, and community members.

She was a Co-Investigator on the NERC Engaging Environments project led by Prof Hilary Geoghegan and on the ESRC-funded Reimagining AI Through Afrofuturistic and Speculative Design project, led by Dr Sanjay Sharma. Most recently, Anita led The 15-Min STEAM City Unbound, a UKRI-funded feasibility study exploring partnerships and STEAM ecosystem development for Black communities in Birmingham and beyond.

Anita currently serves as a steward for Data, Tech and Black Communities CIC and is a long-standing trustee of Artistic Ministries, a 20-year-old Birmingham-based charity set to be reimagined and relaunched in 2026 by a new board of early-career professionals—many of whom were once children supported by its programmes.