SOCIAL MAGIC MAKERS

 

Gia "Gris Gris Mama" Hamilton

Gia M. Hamilton, a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, is the founding director of Gris Gris Lab,Inc., an International Healing Arts Center that explores issues of community building and sustainability through urban agriculture, urban planning and the intersection of art in areas across the United States.  She envisions Gris Gris Lab as an modern long house; by engaging in solving problems that directly affect women in a community, The Lab and its members generate financial sustainability, create trusting community relationships and support  the men and children around what is usually considered the invisible work of women.  Issues of childcare, entrepreneurship, alternative educational models, access to clean and healthy food, stable healthy relationships with community members and safe space are all components of this modern long house experience.

For the past twelve years Hamilton has applied her training by visually documenting progressive change in urban spears and facilitating healing sessions as a basis for community building.  Hamilton later developed the Intentional Living and Community Building Program to train urban farmers, social entrepreneurs and community builders as Holistic Community Organizers.  She also uses a term she coined “social magic” as an expansive tool for creating matriarchal-centered safe spaces around the country . “Social Magic, put simply is the ability of the community to effectively utilize and leverage the resources and assets already present in their community.”  Hamilton’s commitment to her vision has afforded her the opportunity to utilize her skills and expertise as a researcher, curator, lecturer, ethnographer, facilitator, writer and as a training curricula designer and project and program developer  with nonprofits  not only in the U.S. but also  Mexico, Costa Rica, Haiti, France and London.  

Hamilton’s most recent project as the ethnographer and curator of The Black Boy Experiment, an in depth cross cultural and  multidisciplinary study and visual analysis of the childhood differences of black, male youth and her signature exhibit “I Put A Spell On You: Women and Magic (Re)claimed/(Re)defined” a visual exploration of magic defined by women. Hamilton started to run a small urban farm in New Orleans with her three sons and expands her work as a thought leader to developing the Social Magic Sustainability Model as she ventures into areas of Urban Planning Consulting for groups, organizations and individuals using this methodology.