More people than ever want arts and humanities education, but higher education is in crisis, community spaces are disappearing, and the humanities are under attack. Night School Bar offers a way forward for community-building and lifelong, debt-free education. We are asking you to help fund our scholarship program in 2025.

Since we offered our first classes in 2020, Night School Bar has grown into a vibrant community, reaching students from North Carolina to California, and as far as China and Chile. For the past five years, our courses have spanned topics like the Politics of Beauty, Philosophies of Love, and Taste in Literature. Just over a year ago, we added a physical space in Durham, NC, and expanded our curriculum in new directions, including songwriting, urban theory, and film. Each year, we offer more than 80 classes, teach-ins, workshops, and seminars, both online and in-person. Night School Bar has served more than 5,000 students to date.

2024 presented unique challenges that we hope to remedy in 2025. The physical space brought more people into community with one another, but it also increased our day-to-day operational costs. Each year since we began, 75% of students have accessed a full or partial tuition scholarship. In 2024, we saw that number climb to 80%. People are eager to learn together, even as they experience higher financial burdens in the face of rampant inflation and stagnating wages. Night School Bar does not have an endowment; we aren’t sponsored by a company; we aren’t paid for by tax dollars. Everything we do is made possible by community members and life-long learners like you. Without your help, we won’t be able to continue this work in 2025!

Night School Bar’s scholarship model is unique, supporting an incredibly diverse student body. We recognize that many other scholarship programs require students to provide documentation to prove their need. This often misses the fuller picture of their economic reality, and acts as a barrier to entry for aspiring students. At Night School, every student self-determines their own financial need: no gate-keeping, no questions asked. This means that we can create adult classrooms that are diverse across age, race, gender, ethnicity, and class. Importantly, our classes are designed with a wide array of lived experiences in mind—and they are aimed at helping us make critical sense of our world, creating meaningful connections, and inspiring creativity. 

By choice, we are not a certificate- or degree-granting program. Instead, we believe that learning is a lifelong endeavor. This means that everyone who studies with Night School Bar is here because they want to generate new pathways to enrichment and fulfillment, find friends and expand their social worlds, and commit to a better collective future. You can help continue to make Night School Bar possible in 2025!

In addition to this month-long fundraiser, we are also looking for long-term donor-partners. Please email us at nightschoolbar@gmail.com to discuss!