The recurrent polarity at the centre of Leila Houston’s wide-ranging art practice has, this year, become familiar to all us. Together apart, as the posters tell us, reminding us to follow the rules of social distancing. 

In her latest project, Encrypted Sounds of Wellbeing, supported by Arts Council England, Leila continues her use of moving image, both tender and haunting, combined with field sound recordings - ranging from the everyday to the otherworldly - to delicately and deafeningly hold those two states, detachment and community, as one, experienced simultaneously. We cheerily discuss the weather with neighbours at a safe distance, grateful for the interaction and sense of community, but we remain inside the bell jar of our anxiety. The packed-out virtual pub quiz is a hoot until it isn’t and we catch our reflection on the computer screen, emojis dancing across our reflection sitting entirely alone in our living room.
Encrypted Sounds of Wellbeing combines community engagement, collaboration with a broad cohort of artists, public involvement and the commissioning of new work by selected artists. Having developed the concept and secured funding before the pandemic hit, Leila adapted to the restrictions, moved the project online in order to keep it going through lockdown and presents it here as an online exhibition. There is also an IRL counterpart, which can be viewed at The Exchange Bar, 50 Rutland Street, Leicester, LE3 1RD from 10th to 18th October. ​
Encrypted Sounds of Wellbeing public response displayed at the Exchange Bar, Leicester. 
Leila Houston, Encrypted Sounds of Wellbeing (detail), 2020. 
The isolation/togetherness motif finds a parallel in how Leila balances technology and community in her practice. Having grown up in a community centre run by her parents (where she lived with them onsite for 11 years), she feels strongly about the role of environments where people come together to work, create or simply meet and share experiences in an authentic, unmediated exchange. Coronavirus and the resulting restrictions have obviously curtailed these for the time being. The places where we used to meet face to face and shoulder to shoulder - the pubs and dancefloors, galleries and theatres - are now all online; virtual spaces. A blessing and a curse in these socially distanced times. ​

Leila describes her filming and editing process as a form of collage; once she has recorded the sound and moving image elements, working intuitively, she then sifts through these, finding that she has captured particular moods and emotional tones, and sets about weaving them together. She talks about “allowing myself time to play, a bit like when you’re a little kid, going into my own little world”, working in a detached, disjointed, separated state.
The dreamlike yet unsettling quality of Leila’s work, as warmly enveloping as it is haunting, is contrasted by the conviviality of the events where it is presented. For a number of years now she has exhibited her video, sound and sculpture works within larger collaborative projects which typically include community engagement and public involvement, as well as commissioning other artists selected by Leila to create new work. The outcomes of these activities have been presented together as group exhibitions, open events, gatherings and, notably, as Leicester’s Summer Art Trail from 2014 to 2016. ​
Zory Rubel, Here/There, 2020
Zory Rubel, Inbetween, 2020
Artist anonymous, Family and/or in a relationship, 2020
As part of Encrypted Sounds of Wellbeing, Leila collaborated with two groups of young adults from diverse backgrounds or who identify as neurodiverse, from Charnwood Arts’ People Making Places programme. Responding to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the groups created work looking at our essential needs as defined by Abraham Maslow - food, a sense of security, health, connection to others and so on - and how we address these needs in order to maintain our wellbeing: which of them are prioritised, which of them often remain unmet and which ones the groups felt were relevant or not. The group’s works include an animation about lack of ambition; a science fiction short story about how the pandemic has affected our relationships and sense of community; and a participatory activity inviting the public to communicate which needs are most important to them as individuals, with these visual contributions also being included in the online exhibition. The group produced a series of drawings representing various human needs that were then compiled together to create one unified image with instructions for the public to select and colour in the needs that they felt were regularly and sufficiently met in their own lives.
There are many aspects of this participatory activity that Leila is pleased by: that members of the public who responded to the call to action were provided with a pack of colouring pencils to complete the activity: “back to basics and away from the computer screen”; creating a space where visitors to the online exhibition can view the results of this activity and reflect on our similarities and our differences and exchange viewpoints with strangers at a time when we are not able to do this in the ways we used to - those random conversations with a fellow passenger on the bus or the person stood next to us at the bar; the feedback from one participant that the activity had prompted a discussion which challenged assumptions she had made about her own mother’s needs being met.  ​
Daniel Gray, Planethead, 2020