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
About
Contact:
Giiigiiiigrant@gmail.com
Linkedin
Instagram
Gigi Grant was born in a small farming community in southern Ontario
on the traditional territories of the Anishinaabeg and
Haudenosaunee Nations, where she grew up in the Lutheran
church among quilting bees, pancake dinners and harvest festivals. There she was inspired by Mennonite relief and shared resource building, and farm worker organizing for the rights of the land and the people. She took this early inspiration for collective and participatory action across her work- which has grown through years of
embedded practice in communities living and impacted by HIV/AIDS,
People who use drugs, Prisoners, Migrants and many others across Ontario
and Quebec to
form resilient, cooperative, transformative communities of care.
She is a fine artist and poet, who has staged many public art
interventions to emphasize community power and place. Her poetry and
compositions have been published in a number of literary publications,
and most recently award winning for Displacement City on University of Toronto Press.
She is a skilled group facilitator, who builds creative process and ritual to support organizations, movements and leaders facing loss or trauma in their communities. She uses group art and ritual building to develop new narratives, deepen relationships, and creating moments of
transformation and change. Through her work with AIDS Bereavement and Resiliency Program of Ontario, she provided process and growth facilitation for the WORKS
Overdose Prevention site, and many other social, health and harm reduction initiatives across Ontario. She has led many intensive group retreats in the Federal prison setting, to support transformative justice and collective organizing of Prisoners.
She led the renewal of Church of the Holy Trinity, a historic church in downtown Toronto with a legacy of radical welcome, social justice and groundbreaking progressive firsts in Canada. Building on a 180 year legacy of arts and culture focused on social action, she programmed a robust catalogue of concerts, exhibitions, talks, and immersive retreats, connecting with new audiences while threading continuous strands to its past.
Leading through COVID-19, she developed Unity Kitchen, a street level resource hub that brought together houseless people and the communities around them as equals to find resilience and relief during a global pandemic.
Building a platform of positive and generative community action, she supported a collective of houseless peoples and people who hear voices to use the arts and new media creation to challenge displacement and disenfranchisement.
She led a multi-year project to create a public facing hub site, that would embody their histories, while working to new dimensions and to offer the space to new peoples and ideas. Securing funding for this multi-milllion dollar development, she led the remodeling of Holy Trinity’s 3 campus buildings, to provide affordable shared working accommodations and shared use spaces for cultural production, workshops and events. She led the development of an anchor program to resource and support groups and practitioners convening on the campus site, serving 300 persons per day.
Her most recent efforts have been the development of 163 Queen East Health Justice Hub, where she led the social purpose real estate development and retrofitting of a 40,000 Sq. ft. previously vacant Toronto Center office space. She led the animation, network building and operation of this new community hub to develop many strategic, interdisciplinary initiatives such as rapid access telemedicine support for undocumented peoples, a social enterprise event space and employment launchpad, and a community kitchen and catering enterprise activator providing lunch for 100+ people per day.
She additionally fundraised and worked directly with the community to build a high quality art gallery, event space and recording studio, emphasizing the need for access to creation spaces and exhibition venues that tell the stories of marginalized and displaced peoples. These community access resources helped to platform many artists, musicians and culture leaders who’s work now challenges unjust systems, and offers beauty and life to the world around them.
Gigi is also a Trans parent and wife, an avid permaculturalist, and is deeply in love with her wife and child and garden.
Awards-
Outstanding Contribution to Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment for Newcomer, BIPOC and Indigenous Women in Ontario- Presented by MPP Kristyn Wong-Tam, High Commissioner to Kenya, Carolyne Kamender Daudi- 2025
2024 Transfeminine Artist Prize- Presented by Efflora Foundation for Trans Health, 2024
Consulting services-
Not-for-profit/NGO organizational support and project management including fundraising, grant writing, strategic planning, donor relations,
financial management, communications, advocacy, visual identity and
social media management, change navigation, staff management, hiring,
policy development, trauma informed holistic care, risk and crisis
navigation,