Staff & Board

Leah Houston: Artistic Director

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.

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Miriam Ahmed: General Manager

Miriam Ahmed is currently a graduate student at York University in the Masters in Environmental Studies program and is conducting research on inclusion within Toronto’s sustainable food movement. In particular, she is interested in the ways that eating and growing food help shape identity, create belonging and incite action. Her past experiences include undertaking an internship in Bangladesh with the Grameen Bank and conducting research on Diversity and Inclusion for Ontario Nature.

Having a culturally diverse family, Miriam loves cooking new foods and exploring the cities many ethnic restaurants. Her own experience growing up in a newcomer family, her love of food, and her passion to create brought her to the newly established gardens in Mabelle park in the summer of 2010. She looks forward to embarking on a new path with MABELLEarts, continuing to build strong relationships with the community members of Mabelle, and exploring ways to use the mediums of art and food in giving voice to people.

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Associate Artists

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Marianne Alas: Lead Artist, Women’s Sewing Room

Marianne has been happily sewing for most of her life. She has worked on costumes for Jumblies Theatre’s productions of Once a Shoreline and Bridge of One Hair. As well she has worked as a textile artist for Karen Jack Designs and ran her own clothing line AKA Menswear. She is currently studying design at George Brown College. Marianne is the lead artist of the MABELLEarts Women’s Sewing Room.

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Amina Beegun: Lead Sewing Instructor
Amina has been sewing since she was five. She was taught by her mom and her sisters, as well as receiving training in haut couture fashion. Amina has been working in the Somali community for many years, as a sewing instructor and as a trainer with the Somali Women and Children Support Network. It was there that she first heard about Jumblies and decided to become involved. Amina currently works as a Sewing Instructor in the Women’s Sewing Room at MABELLEarts.

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Faten Toubasi: MABELLEartSchool Instructor

Faten Toubasi is a visual artist, painter and community art instructor. Faten is now instructing drawing classes for adults and seniors with MABELLEartSchool. In 2009 Faten participated in the Jumblies Studio – an internship program for emerging community artists. Through this experience she had the opportunity to work with MABELLEarts, Arts4All and Jumblies’ residency in Scarborough. She then worked with MABELLEarts ‘projects Lantern Garden, Lobby Art and the Winter Festival. Faten is currently leading art classes with Arts Etobicokes’ Saturdays Store front Art Workshop and Art Discovery projects.

Faten lived in Palestine most of her life. She is a graduate of Repins’ Academy of Arts in St.Petersbourg Russia .She then worked as a Supervisor and instructor of children’s art at The Early Childhood Resource Center in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and taught Painting and Drawing at UNRWA’s Ramallah Women’s Training College. Faten made three Personal exhibitions and participated in all Palestinian League of Artist exhibitions in Palestine and abroad.

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Board of Directors

Regan Mancini loves creativity and design, bringing people in her community together, building global linkages and the art of storytelling. She is a founding board member of MABELLEarts, having studied with artistic director leah houston at OISE and been inspired by Leah’s commitment and ability to enact a vision that unites art, storytelling and community. Regan was immersed in artistic endeavors from an early age and for the past 12 years has committed her daylight hours to the field of international development.

Regan says: “I’m here because I believe in MABELLEart’s vision and love the framework from which it works.”

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Noah Kenneally is currently studying Early Childhood Education at Ryerson University in Toronto. He has worked extensively in theatre and the visual arts, and most loves to play in the places where they intersect. His combinations of sculpture, storytelling, physical theatre, puppetry and performance art, both evocative and silly, have been performed all over Canada and the U.S. at such marvelous venues as The Cooking Fire Theatre Festival, The International Toy Theatre Festival, Day O’ Delight, The Ashkenaz Festival, Harbourfront Centre’s Milk Children’s Theatre Festival, Pop Montreal, and many other wonderful events.

Noah was an associate artist with Jumblies Theatre for eight years. He has been intimately involved in MABELLEarts since its beginnings. He and Leah Houston were co-founders of Pigeon Creek Collective, an arts initiative based in the Mabelle neighbourhood that was on of the sparks that helped light the warm and inspiring fire of MABELLEarts.

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Leah Sherry is a media literacy high school teacher in an alternative program designed for disengaged students. She has been teaching since 2001.

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Bill Livingstone was educated in math and physics to the master’s level. He worked for a company building navigation systems analyzing the theory and operation of mechanical and quantum based ring laser gyroscopes. Bill also likes to make things and given a table saw will make drawers or a door, given a sewing machine will make a shirt, given a piano will make music, given a pencil will draw a picture, given a knife will make a model, and given feet will dance and walk.

Bill says: “As I grow with Ma [MABELLEarts], I dabble in most areas and encourage others to do so as well. Living nearby, I provide some local input to the board, while being ‘charmingly’ eccentric. Would like to add a windmill to the park project. And then browse my local Goodwill on the way home, for nuggets for my niece’s new baby.”

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Mike Lipowski has worked in the museums and community development field since 1978. His background is in anthropology with a focus on folk art. Mike currently works at Montgomery’s Inn, a museum striving to be relevant and accessible to its community.