Multimedia Storytelling

Alexia’s art practice is rooted in collaboration, co-creation, and the belief that people are the most powerful narrators of their own lives. As a cultural organizer, she works alongside community members, she partners with youth, organizers, and grassroots organizations to create multimedia storytelling projects that center lived experience, collective memory, and shared imagination. Her work spans visual art, photography, film making, podcasting, audio, archiving, and participatory media, using art as a process rather than a product.

At the core of Alexia’s practice is the understanding that art is inherently collective. She approaches storytelling as a relational act that emerges through trust, dialogue, and mutual care. By prioritizing community-led narratives over extraction or authorship, her work resists dominant cultural frameworks that have historically spoken for, over, or about marginalized communities.

Through collaborative art-making, Alexia creates spaces where people can reclaim voice, agency, and representation on their own terms.

Documenting Austin History

As Policy Director of PODER, Alexia recognized that storytelling is key to building successful campaigns and systemic policy change. In 2020-2021 she researched, curated, and led a series of videos documenting the history of PODER grassroots environmental justice work across East Austin. She also partnered with organizations like Intersectional Environmentalist to create social media content building the organizations online presence and gaining 5,000+ followers while reaching over 2,000,000 views. Lastly she connected with journalist (More Perfect Union, Now This Impact) to film, interview, and document local campaigns.

Archiving

In 2025, Alexia worked with community members and organizers of Community Powered ATX to put together a digital archive through ArcGIS’s StoryMaps to document land use history in East Austin. This includes 30+ stories of gentrification/displacement/housing justice.

Youth Podcast

Through my non-profit Land Justice Community School (formerly Start:Empowerment)’s summer youth fellowship program I worked to co-create a 10 episode podcast hosted by our two youth fellows Genesis and Madi. This podcast centers lived experience as knowledge and uplifts Black & Brown voices from East Austin in conversations around land use, housing justice, healing and more.

Mini Documentary & Film Workshop

Created a 2-week Community Cinema Workshop fostering co-creation, magnified community voices, and created meaningful stories on land use that will resonate within Austin, TX and beyond. Co-created by Start:Empowerment and Sauntr, this workshop helped participants understand the significance of community-oriented filmmaking and gain hands-on experience in narrative building, camera usage, and technical-skills development. The end result is a 14 minute mini documentary on gentrification, homelessness, and housing justice in East Austin co-created by 8 directly impacted residents.

Youth Voices

January to May 2023: Through Harvard Law School’s Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative’s Students Speak program, Alexia’s multimedia storytelling practice centered youth voice as both an artistic and empowerment process. Working as a facilitator, Alexia supported Black and Brown high school students in collaboratively writing speeches, shaping personal narratives, filming and documenting advocacy work, and preparing public presentations. 15 youth delivered testimony at the Massachusetts State House where they participated in and helped host a legislative briefing, and co-led the annual Students Speak Youth Summit at Harvard Law School, a full day of youth-designed advocacy workshops and keynote talks with 100+ students. Alexia’s facilitation emphasized trauma-informed storytelling, collective authorship, and confidence-building, translating lived experience into policy-facing narratives. This work culminated in tangible impact, including increased state funding for Safe and Supportive Schools Program ($200,000) and a student-led organizing campaign on changing the attendance policy at Brockton High School. The attendance policy was changed in the Fall of 2023.

Creative Direction

Photos Leta K Photography, LLC

Editing by Kirsten Wessel

Creative direction Alexia Leclercq

Art Events

Heat kills more people than any other extreme weather event. To address this growing crisis, the UT–City CoLab at the Jackson School of Geoscience and Planet Texas 2050 has been advancing innovative initiatives around heat resilience. One highlight was the partnership with Tapi Studios and GAVA to host the inaugural screening of the short film Una Nave Frágil (A Fragile Vessel), followed by a dynamic community conversation on extreme heat. The discussion explored how mapping, satellite data, and climate models can help cities and communities better understand and prepare for heat events.The film itself emerged from conversations between community members, academics, faculty, students, and city staff. It follows the story of one Austin family during the record-breaking heat of summer 2023, capturing intergenerational perspectives on living through extreme weather events.

The screening, held at Dottiewood Studios in North Austin, blended art, science, and community engagement to create an immersive evening for attendees. As CoLab project manager, Alexia Leclercq, led the creation of the art and science rooms where participants reflected creatively on heat through prompts like “How would you describe heat to an alien?” and interrogated neighborhood heat maps, including the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI), to illustrate how heat is experienced differently across Austin, from Westlake Highlands to Dove Springs, Montopolis, and Rundberg.

Photos by Thao Nguyen