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.

Miriam Ahmed - General Manager

Miriam Ahmed is the General Manager and Chief Culinary Artist at MABELLEarts.  She is a graduate of York University’s Masters in Environmental Studies program. Her research focused on inclusion and diversity 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. Miriam loves cooking new foods, exploring the cities many ethnic restaurants, and learning about food production. 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 as a way learning about one another and the world we live in.

Alexandra Draghici - Lead Artist

Alexandra Draghici is a performance maker. She is interested in what can be conjured out of forming a relationship with space. She is captivated by crafting space specific performances with and for everyone, while provoking and connecting the senses and asking the body to test and flirt with its environment. Alexandra was a “case study” and performer in Dr. Ulla Neuerburg Denzer’s Emotional Laboratory, in which she studied the Rasa Boxes as developed by Richard Schechner. She was able to exercise the work as Jocasta in Oedipus as part of the City of Wine Festival. She performed and collaborated with Professor Patrick Leroux’s Hypertext and Performance: A resonant response to Joanna Baillie’s Witchcraft. She has performed many self-written works at Concordia University and the Deleon White Gallery. As a member of the Carney Collective, Alexandra directed and composed live sound for Tawillager written by Joseph Bembridge. She directed Nocturn and choreographed Access Feeling, written by Ryan Hurl. She taught drama classes for adolescents and youth with a focus on the body and its storytelling ability at the Eagle Arts Academy in Shawnigan Lake, where she directed The Secret Garden and Omcanigoa (a devised piece). After being a summer student with MABELLEarts, Alexandra assisted with the performance of a Light in Mid-Winter Parade (February 2011). She is currently doing an internship with MABELLEarts and Jumblies Theatre thanks to the George Cedric Metcalf Foundation and is happily entertaining the possibility of starting a performance ensemble for Mabelle residents and neighbours!

Associate Artists

Marianne Alas - Associate Artist, textile arts

Marianne Alas has a degree in Fine Arts focusing on Printmaking and a diploma in Fashion Design. Marianne was the costume coordinator for many Jumblie’s Theatre productions, Once a Shoreline, Bridge of One Hair and more recently Like An Old Tale. She also creates and makes things at MABELLEarts and Arts 4All. She has made costumes for the Mississauga Living Arts Centre, patterns for local Hoody company Clothing Brand Experiment and was an assistant designer at Karen Jack Design, a soft furnishing company. She once ran her own company called AKA Menswear, that specialized in recycled men’s shirts and Mexican wresting hoodies.  Marianne is also a cook specializing in vegetarian and whole foods.

 Elinor Whidden  received a BA in Canadian/Environmental Studies from Trent University, a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Designand a MFA

Elinor Whidden - Associate Artist, Visual Arts

from SUNY at Buffalo. She has exhibited throughout North America, recently showing work in Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Buffalo NY. In 2004 she was featured as an emerging artist on CBC’s Zed TV and in 2007 she attended the Walking and Art residency at the Banff Centre. Whidden is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including creation grants from Nova Scotia Culture, Tourism & Heritage, the Ontario Arts Council, and most recently from the Canada Council for the Arts. Whidden’s current artistic practice continues her quest to find a way to survive and adapt in a world increasingly threatened by contemporary car culture.

Sean Frey - Associate Artist, Multidisciplinary Arts

Sean Frey is a puppeteer, designer, installation artist and community-based theatre artist. Sean has worked as an Ontario Arts Council artist-in-the-schools, with Fixtpoint Theatre and Ahuri Theatre as a designer and performer, at Spiral Garden as a mask and puppet artist, and extensively with Jumblies Theatre, as well as cultivating his own artistic practice and independent projects. In 2008, he was awarded a year-long internship grant with Jumblies from the George Cedric Metcalf Charitable Foundation. He was also an artist/participant in Harrel Fletcher’s collaborative art project “Born Out of Pleasure” at the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery. In 2009, he worked with shadow theatre and projections artist Clea Minaker and musician Leslie Feist on “The Living Lantern” presented at Casteliers Puppet Festival. Throughout 2009/2010, Sean has continued to work with Jumblies Theatre as lead artist on the Scarborough residency, including the “Nesting” (2009) and “Like an Old Tale” (2010) events. Sean’s artistic interests presently lead him into exploring the intersection of performance and visual arts, and include projections, film, light and shadow.

Board of Directors

Noah Kenneally

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.

Bill Livingstone

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.”

Mike Lipowski

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.