Making It - Upgrade Yourself Film Series

Making It: Aisha Mirza

The benefits of unconventional creative living and carving out a career as a polymath.

Aisha Mirza is a multi-disciplinary artist living on a boat in East London. A writer, photographer, musician, activist, and curator, their work explores the relationship between queerness, transness, race, mental health, ecocide, off-grid living, and art.

Upgrade Yourself presenter Jonelle Awomoyi meets Aisha for a walk through the marshes, photographing and recording the local environment that shapes their creative practice.

With sculpture, photography, and text about sex work shown at the ICA, Aisha's career is eclectic and boundary-crossing. Their work has been published in The Guardian, The New York Times, Vice, Cosmopolitan, i-D, and BuzzFeed, and they wrote a monthly queer mental health advice column for gal-dem magazine.

But sustaining a creative life in London requires inventive solutions.

“It's a very difficult time to be alive. You've got to love living unconventionally.”

To navigate the city's rental market and sustain a practice, Aisha lives off-grid on a canal boat near Walthamstow Marshes—no internet, compost toilets, but surrounded by locks, green spaces, and nature. It's how they survive, making their current career possible in ways a conventional lifestyle wouldn't allow.

It's a testament to the resourcefulness artists need to thrive, and the alternative paths that can emerge when necessity meets imagination.

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Upgrade Yourself (16–30)

We offer a range of entry routes into the arts and creative industries. Leveraging our resident creative community and our cultural programme, we create space for young people aged 16–30 to explore a creative career, test ideas, learn, and grow with confidence.