163 Queen East Health Justice Hub

Gigi Grant

Gigi Grant is an artist, project leader, and community organizer activating beauty and creation to bring forward social change.

About

Major Projects:

163 Queen East Health Justice Hub
Leading SPRE Development and Community Hub for HIV+ and Displaced Peoples

Unity Kitchen Toronto
Developing a Street Level Resource Center for Houseless Peoples in Downtown Toronto

Church of the Holy Trinity
Renewing the identity and legacy of a 180 year old church dedicated to social justice

Prisoners’ Justice and Support
Building justice, compassion and alternatives to incarceration through community development and arts creation.

Toronto Homeless Memorial
Leading Toronto’s monthly community ritual and advocacy pillar remembering the lives of houseless peoples.

Interventions, installations and Publications:

Festival of Shelter
Unity Recycled Textile Printing
Voices of Women For Peace Service
Disappearing Space Poster
Jane Doe Wheatpaste
Memorial Tiles
175 Anniversary Book and Collages
Service Bulletins
Encampment Wreath
Ascension Poem and Photos
An Anarchist Response to HIV/HCV Design
HIV Criminalization Advocacy

Artworks

A center for displaced peoples, from here, and around the world.
Website- 163queeneast.com
Instagram- @163queeneast

163 Queen East Health Justice Hub leverages 40,000 Sq. ft. of previously vacant Toronto Center office space, to bring together grassroots community efforts in HIV/AIDS, health innovation, Trans care, Refugee and Migrant action under one roof.

This project conserves real estate for grassroots groups and organizations providing culturally reflexive and responsive health and social support.

Beginning before COVID-19, 7 HIV/AIDS organizations serving Black, Indigenous, Newcomers, Prisoners, and street-involved peoples, came together to vision our sector, and how we could protect real estate for our grassroots organizations. Toronto People with AIDS Foundation led these efforts to secure a 40,000sq. ft. building as a donation from a private donor, which in 2023, began to operationalize as a space of community support, gathering, cultural events, and organizing- working across a network of organizations, initiatives and community leaders to develop a vision of a community health justice hub. Emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic our visioning revealed the need for intersectional health, safety and justice organizing for the many, many peoples who continue to struggle to find stability and security in Toronto and across the GTA.

Gathering a table of community leaders, members fo HIV organizations and other social movements, we held extensive consultations, not just about what the hub should look like, but also how it should feel, and its principles. We visioned a hub that could speak equally and directly to the overlapping needs of migrants and newcomers living with HIV, many in the shelter system across Toronto- the houseless person, living in constant health and mental health precarity- and the longterm survivors of HIV, now coping with the financial insecurity and isolation of ageing with a disability.

Inspired by the work of permaculturists, we thought about how we could create a social and physical architecture that sought not to force an narrative or idea, but could resource and grow the interests, gifts and abilities of our communties.

This non-interventionist approach to social purpose space buillding allowed for a vibrant landscape of community life and cultural leadership to emerge. Instead of rigid programming and purpose, our stakeholders found a blank canvas of resources that they could tap directly into their experiences, and bring forward their ideas to address the challenges they faced in Canadian society.

We worked to shape a resource hub around the lives of people- to create space for their expressions of health and wellness, of culture and celebration. Our job being to witness, support and scaffold the good ideas materializing before us.

This hub grew in partnership with organizations specifically serving the Black, Indigenous, Trans and Refugee communities- including Hope For Refugees, and the Ubuntu Collective, both funded by the Federal Women and Gender Equality Portfolio, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, and supported by the City of Toronto Confronting Anti-Black Racism Committee. Through these partnerships, and through the growth and capacity of PWA Toronto as the hub anchor, this essential community resource now has a traffic of 2500 people per week.

Working across these partnerships, we were successful in fundraising as a coalition to build out new infrastructure such as a large social enterprise event space, commercial kitchen, recording studio, makers spaces, and a high quality art gallery and performance space.

Now these bookable community resources are used by groups within the hub and networks for social action across the GTA. Each of these resources providing opportunity for advancement and employment in a supportive, affirming, and human-centered setting.

163 Queen East specifically emphasizes the need for safe spaces for HIV+ and LGBTQ+ refugees and newcomers. Throughout the development of this hub, we recognized the gap in need for safe and uplifting spaces for newcomers, that they are the most at risk for gender-based violence, live in the most precarious housing, and have the least consistent access to essential social and health services. This well-being gap can only be closed through community initiatives that create safety, return personal power, and offer opportunities for self-determination and growth. This volunteer driven hub project, has worked with hundreds of refugees and newcomers to build their skills, obtain permanent residency, and advance in Canadian society. Many of whom have gone on to successful employment, securing lasting housing, and continuing to give back as culture and community leaders.

Process of renovation between 2023-2025:

Initiated at the beginning of the AIDS crisis in Canada, People With AIDS Foundation was created through grassroots cooperation of lovers, partners and families, to support the sick and dying, and make action for life-affirming care and treatment. Now 36 years later, HIV and human health disparity continues to impact our communities across the world. Launching 163 Queen East, PWA fulfills the vision of these grassroots movement leaders- continuing their mission to create a world where all people are deserving of health, and where no one is excluded from justice, equity and love.

Over the past ten years, HIV has resurged in its impact on the Global South. Global cuts to social funding, medicine, education and community development have allowed for HIV to continue to compromise health of the most disenfranchised and under-resourced.

HIV has mirrored to us the most extreme consequences of colonialism, drawing a map of financial and social immobility through its endemic regions.

Coupled with rising homophobia, transphobia, and gender based violence, refugees and newcomers from Africa, Asia, Central and South America, have come to Canada, seeking freedom from violence and oppression, as well as care for them and their families. Global south migration has become increasingly a point of rallying for far-right movements and governments across the world, and even within their displacement, the many seeking health and safety find difficult and isolating conditions in the first world. LGBTQ+ and HIV Positive newcomers face some of the highest rates of discrimination within Canada, and are at the highest risk of homelessness, human trafficking and abuse. Often facing a double racism in Canadian society, HIV+ newcomers face stigma and rejection in their diasporic communities, while facing exclusion from Canadian social, legal and labour protections.

The development of 163 Queen East Health Justice Hub brings together legacy grassroots organizations, health services, and new and emerging community organizations to address the new landscape of HIV and human health disparity.

In the same way that the first LGBTQ+ and HIV+ grassroots volunteers came together to radically resist death and disappearance with life, we come together as a community to imagine new world of love and justice for all.

Responding to the increasing support challenges for migrants, we developed a high quality health and social service integration for people experiencing multiple and complex care needs- example, development of a telemedicine program for refugees and undocumented peoples, to within the same day, see a doctor virtually, have their HIV/Trans care medication filled and delivered, be able to access housing and settlement/social support services, access a food bank or volunteer prepared lunch program, connect across partner groups representing specific culture or community need, and to do this in a place of free cultural expression, safe from LGBTQ+ persecution, racism, transphobia.

163 Queen East was selected for investment by United Way of Greater Toronto as part of their Expanding Community Spaces Campaign. This investment ignites partnership by creating an incubation and growth environment for non-profit, grassroots organizations serving queer, Trans, Black, Latinx, Indigenous and Refugee communities across the GTA.

Retrofitting 5000 sq. ft. as a Launch and Grow space to support the ongoing growth and innovation of grassroots groups who would otherwise be unable to afford space in the downtown core- further conserving real estate for community action.

New and growing groups serving the most marginalized persons in Canadian society often face the pitfall of receiving seed funding, do important and lifesaving work, but are unable to create the sustainability and permanence that comes with a physical space.

This launch and grow space sought to detangle organizations and groups with good ideas and initiatives, from the precarity of funding cycles and the high entry cost to community space in the GTA. What has emerged has been the creation of a holistic environment, where organizations can interconnect, support their membership, andin turn be supported by the resources and community present at this hub.

163 Queen East was produced in partnership with: