Leah Houston has been cultivating a dynamic, multi-disciplinary community-based arts practice for over 8 years, incorporating visual arts and installation, theatre, research, administration and performance. Leah is currently the Artistic Director of MABELLEarts, a community arts company in residence in the Mabelle community – a high density Toronto Community Housing complex in Etobicoke Ontario. MABELLEarts brings together people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities together to make art, tell stories and creatively transform the place that is Mabelle.

Leah has worked with a diversity of organizations including: Jumblies Theatre, The Spiral Garden, Clay and Paper Theatre and Harbourfront Centre. In 2008, she was the Artist-In-Residence at Homes First Society, an alternative housing organization for people who are homeless. The collaborative artwork made with that community premiered at Nuit Blanche in 2008.

Leah’s over-arching goal is to work with all sorts of people in order to tell the beautiful, surprising, ordinary, extraordinary stories of our lives. Leah recently completed a Master’s degree at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, further exploring the promise of feminism and community arts in the context of ‘bad’ neighbourhoods.