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
Church of the Holy Trinity
Holy Trinity leveraged a small campus across three buildings in Trinity Square to build a resource space for grassroots movements and networks.
In 2018, the shrinking but dedicated church congregation sought a new model and direction for its buildings and resources that would embody their histories, while working to new dimensions, to offer the space to new peoples and ideas.
We embarked on a multi-year journey to create a community hub space that offered affordable shared working accommodations, shared use spaces for cultural production, to host workshops and events, and that had a core program that could resource and support the network of artists, groups and practitioners convening around it’s campus.
The biggest transformation this community would go through in this project, was recognizing the changes that happened around them. After
many decades of working to build inclusive community, increasing wealth desparity had caused a crisis of desperation and mental health disability in the downtown core. No longer home to left bank philosophers, artists and activists that had called Holy Trinity home, the stark division between the ultra-wealthy and the poor was marked by intense policing, public mental health crisis, and a downtown core that felt explosively divided.
Focusing on the themes of reconciliation and renewal of our society who are supported by our grassroots organization incubator.
Through this project, Holy Trinity offers subsidized rent of office and programming space, as well as organizational support to these smaller sized organizations making an impact in our community.
Through this incubator space, these organizations are able to share and collaborate on solving equity and justice issues, and as well lend themselves to the animation of community life in the downtown core, and broaden the scope of helping or advocacy projects, drawing on the expertise of this group of partner organizations.
The Toronto Homeless Memorial helps to anchor these organizations within our campus. It is a physical memorial for the thousands who have died on the streets of Toronto. It is a symbol of the intersections of each of our work. It was well attended in person, and now that we have taken this memorial online, it extends its reach to participants across the country. Many of whom have lost a loved one and want a space to remember and honour their life.
The highest concentration of street involvement and poverty in Toronto's downtown core exists within a 10 block radius of Yonge/Dundas square- we see on a daily basis, and hear from the Yonge-Dundas BIA, the City, and social service partners that the existing services are insufficient to the amount of need in this area. They also exist winthin the highest per capita concentration of shelter services, now housing up to 1500 persons in this radius with another 1000 more directly outside of this zone.
There was a need for a coordinated response to the community health and safety of this area, that requires the collaboration of multiple groups and practitioners, to support the intersecting whole person well-being needs of these populations. Fostering a hub space through which collaboration can occur, led by-and-for populations that are most impacted by poverty and its' consequences, and that individuals do not have to choose between meeting basic needs, and issues like health care or harm reduction support, is essential.
COVID created a level of service scarcity and inconsistency that has caused a further marginalization of these communities, and a heightened risk for violence, overdose, health and mental health crisis. We also see that for individuals living on the street or in shelters, that there is a lack of culturally appropriate community spaces and advancement opportunities to engage with, through volunteering, and participation in community events.
Today, Trinity comUNITY Hub continues to make interdisciplinary action for health and safety for our City’s most marginalized, and to continue to offer a place of welcome, to free concerts, talks, art classes and many more vibrant initiatives that emerged while this community continues to live into their legacy.
Surrounded by major banks, multi-national corporations, and the Toronto Eaton’s Center, Holy Trinity stares in the face of a global capitalist power that seeks to commodify all parts of our shared labour and shared world. Finding a depth of spirituality in what could be freely offered in community, Holy Trinity embraced an ethos of free welcome and abundance.
Reinvigorating and continuing it’s community’s 180 year legacy of radical hospitality, spirituality and creativity, this project redefined its campus as a site of resistance against capitalist depersonalization. Through arts, music, dance, food and celebration, Holy Trinity became an island of inspiration for new generations seeking a place of free expression, uniqueness and love.