On May 6, 2025, NorthStar was notified that the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is terminating its cooperative agreement with South Arts, effective May 31. As a result, NorthStar will lose significant grant-funded capacity support for staff and artists.

The termination letter states that funding will now be directed toward federal priorities, leaving behind programs like ArtsHERE, which invested in community-rooted, artist-led cultural spaces like ours.

This is a direct attack from the federal government on organizations that preserve the practices and histories of BIPOC communities. Despite this political and spiritual attempt to disinvest from Black cultural work and institutions that center creative resistance, we believe in the power of our community to see us through.

In response to this sudden loss of vital funding, we’re launching No Independence Without Us, a bold and urgent call to protect Black creative and spiritual space.

With your support, we're building a $30,000 matching pool to power our No Independence Without Us campaign and we’re inviting a you to help us lead the way.

By pledging a matching gift, you’ll help us:

Inspire grassroots giving by doubling donations in real time
Build momentum at key moments in the campaign
Send a powerful message: this work matters, and it’s worth investing in

If we are able to reach our goal in matching gifts, we will be activated during specific weeks of our campaign, rallying community support and turning every $1 into $2 for NorthStar’s artists, staff, and creative sanctuary up to $30,000.

Founded by Phil and Nnenna Freelon, NorthStar emerged as a response to the gentrification reshaping Durham, standing as a symbol of creativity and resistance against displacement. Our home is a historic church built in 1930, one of only four in the United States designed specifically for a deaf congregation and the only one in the South. This remarkable legacy of inclusion and accessibility informs our mission to protect and uplift communities that have been pushed to the margins.

No Independence Without Us: Matching Pool

By NorthStar Church of the Arts Inc

No Independence Without Us: Matching Pool