MoFundamentals
Foster-Adoptee Led Dance Program
OUR IMPACT
2779
Audience Members Served Original Foster-Adoptee Works
1188
Foster Youth and Students Served in Pandemic
282
Dance Workshops and Dance Classes Hosted
50
Foster-Adoptee Artists Hired under our RESILIENCE model
46
Artist Professional Development Workshops Hosted
36
Arts, Educational, and Social Welfare NonProfit Partners
OUR MISSION
Create spaces for foster-adoptee youth and adults to grieve, process, heal, and speak about their truth in foster care, filling in the gap of what is needed to transform and abolish this traumatic system by:
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Hiring foster-adoptee artists at an admin rate of $20/hr and performance rate of $100/hr
Building out a foster-adoptee dancer and artist network in the U.S.
Facilitating community spaces, centering foster-adoptee perspectives (i.e. panels, festivals, performances, and workshops)
Our Beginning and Pilot Program
MoFundamentals, originally Memoirs Of A Broke Chicano, began after our founder Gabriel "MoFundamentals" Gutierrez desired to utilize dance as a healing modality to process his own experiences navigating foster care, adoption, and recovering from houselessness.
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In 2013, we conducted an ethnographic research project to compare art experiences among 20 undergraduate and graduate foster-adoptee artists. We found nearly everyone utilized arts as their healing modality, despite underfunded programs or difficulty accessing art opportunities in k-12.
Our pilot program at Hathaway Sycamores Learning Lab from 2014-2016 focused on expanding our research into a therapeutic program centering foster-adoptee artist development through a healing dance practice.
