Leah Houston has been cultivating a dynamic, multi-disciplinary community-based arts practice for 10 years, incorporating visual arts and installation, performance, research and public space transformation, working with people of all ages and backgrounds. Leah is the Artistic Director of MABELLEarts. She has created and produced many community arts events and led a number of artists to create new work that tells the ordinary, extraordinary stories of our lives. Projects have included We Are Here, multi-media installation that premiered during the 2008 Nuit Blanche in Toronto, representing a year-long residency in two Toronto shelters; as well as a number of projects with over 600 residents and 60 artists at MABELLEarts. Leah’s most consuming project to date has been the ongoing collaborative transformation of the Mabelle Park, a once-neglected green space in the heart of the Mabelle neighbourhood. Leah has given many presentations and workshops in schools, colleges and universities. She is a graduate of York University’s Environmental Studies Department and holds an M.A from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Her Masters thesis focused on the promise of feminism and community arts in the context of “bad” neighbourhoods.