Pauline Mosley

I have to give kudos to so many people - my dance teachers growing up, and especially my godmother, who passed away when I was young. She was probably one of the first people to kind of take a chance on me, and she gave me a bit of a scholarship to continue pursuing dance. I think without that, I probably would not have gotten as far as I did with dance. My godfather, who lives in California, encouraged me to pursue getting my master's, and without that, again, I probably would not have gotten as far as I have with 773 and just kind of growing that organization as it has grown to be, business-wise. I really just attribute all of my success to the people who have pushed me and who saw something in me that either I didn't see at the moment, or they just saw something and wanted to help me out.

The best thing that I've heard, and one thing that I really, really have been trying to live by, is to be where your feet are. Sometimes, so often, as a direct leader, we're always looking ahead, looking forward, trying to see what's next. Sometimes we aren't always in the moment, and that kind of takes away from whoever we're serving in that moment. I've been really trying to focus on being where my feet are, being present in the moment, because that really impacts those that we are serving, and it impacts the people that I'm working with, whether I'm serving them or just co-working with them. That really helps to just increase those relationships, which helps a lot.

Definitely use resources. Ask for help. It's okay to ask for help, it's okay to need help, and it's okay to let people help you, especially those who have gone through this experience before us. Having a mentor really helped Tyler and I with so much. Any question that we had, we would just go to our mentor, and they would help us out. Even if we didn't, like, sometimes we would hesitate to ask, because we're like, oh, this is a stupid question, like, this is something we should know, and we'd be kind of embarrassed about whatever we're going through. But everybody goes through it at some point, and sometimes someone will have an answer for you. You don't always have to go through things alone. You don't always have to take the hard way, the route of despair, the route of hardship. Sometimes it is okay to ask for help, and to get that help.

The biggest challenge right now is definitely funding. Finding funding that will help overall, like, general operating. Unfortunately, right now, Tyler and I have had to pause paying ourselves, so we are working free, essentially. Right now, there is not a lot of funding for the arts overall, not just in Chicago, not just in Illinois, but all across the United States. Funding for the arts has been cut in half, and that has really put a dent into all of our programming, not just what we do for ourselves and for our community, but CPS and all of the schools that we work with have seen a cut. That is really detrimental to the students. We've seen a lot of research about how important it is, not just for dance, but just arts in general, with social-emotional learning, emotional regulation, things like that. The good part about that is that this community of artists, we are coming together even now more than ever, and trying to build systems that don't need that funding, so that we can sustain ourselves and continue to give to the community, continue to give people the outlet in the arts that they need. That is one kind of good thing that's coming from this, is that it's bringing everybody together to crowdsurf, crowdfund, and things like that. But it is making it a little bit more laborious on us as leaders.