BUILDING A SPACE FOR JUSTICE the campaign to renew the Festival Center
Together,
We can be renewed.
Do you want to experience deeper meaning in your faith? Does injustice and the divisions in our society hurt your heart?
Together, we can renew the world. Are you ready to create a just world for everyone? Do you want to see faith in action as a means of societal transformation and healing? Do you want to join with people of faith from across the country working for justice? If yes, then help us renovate our home… So that together we can build movements for justice. So that together we will be renewed in our hearts and minds.
So that together we will fulfill the promise of our faith.
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We need spaces where people of all faiths and those who ascribe to no religious belief can work together in mutual affirmation and joy.
Bill Mefford Executive Director
Together we can fulfill the promise of the Festival Center,
a hub for justice 4|
Why now?
A tradition of Love and Justice
In 2020, we retained architects to upgrade our energy systems and to rethink the space on all three floors of the building. Now it is time to make the vision real. We are fulfilling the promise made 30 years ago... Our faith compels us to work for the common good. Our call is to be in solidarity with God, each other, and all of creation. We trace our beginnings to The Church of the Saviour, a small, nondenominational church in Washington, DC, founded in 1947 by Gordon and Mary Cosby. The church has evolved to form several communities of faith with dozens of outreach ministries. These communities provide essential leadership for ministries in Washington, DC, and across the country. Gordon and a small group of others started the Festival Center to train faith leaders for mission and justice. Their call remains ours today. The Festival Center is a place for people who stand against oppression and who work for a just world. All are welcome here as we learn, connect, celebrate, and live in solidarity. We believe in a liberating God who offers unconditional love to all, one who sides with the oppressed and seeks the flourishing of all creation. All are welcome as together we work for justice alongside those who struggle.
PROJECT DETAILS The renovation to the Festival Center building will create opportunities for hospitality and justice through the following upgrades.
Technology
In light of the pandemic that has changed the way we meet one another, upgraded technology will allow us to continue welcoming people from all over the country to the Festival Center for workshops and advocacy gatherings. With this upgraded technology, community groups will be able to host their own zoom events, create podcasts, and build communities for justice all across the country.
Sustainability
Once these renovations are completed and the cost fully raised, operational costs of the Festival Center will be almost entirely covered for the first time since our founding thanks to the dramatic increase in rentable space and energy savings. This sustainability will allow us to pour ourselves more fully into partnering with faith communities and justice organizations so that we can be more faithful co-workers in the causes for justice.
Art
Partnerships with local artists and art communities will bring vibrant and critically relevant artwork to our lobby and throughout the building, informing our worship and our advocacy for justice.
Spaces For All
We will create space for large and small groups to come together and worship, plan, strategize, and dream of new ways to serve people and work for justice. At the same time, we will have small spaces for individuals to find solace and space to focus on the inward journey.
Reduction of Energy Usage
We will honor creation by installing solar panels on our roof and reduce our energy usage by up to 2/3, lowering the cost of maintaining our building dramatically. We then can pour into the partnerships we are creating with faith communities and justice-seeking organizations.
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will you join us?
your generous support of this campaign will support these renovation priorities so that together we can fulfill the promise of the original vision of the Festival Center.
This is our time.
Will you support us as together we build a safer and more functional home?
Social Justice Space
On the second floor we will provide fairly priced space for start-up social justice organizations – whose work is often hampered by a lack of space. We will walk alongside these organizations and give them a home. Just as Gordon Cosby originally envisioned an incubator space for new ministries and works to be birthed, the second floor will fulfill that vision for organizations and faith communities today. These organizations and faith communities can build the movements that will change local communities and ultimately, the world.
State-of-The-Art-Kitchen
An amazing state-of-the-art kitchen will allow partnering organizations to train students for food service jobs and offer culinary arts classes. Our hope is that not only will students learn, but the result of their work will feed those in our neighborhood in a way that not only nourishes their bodies, but their spirits as well.
Spiritual Formation
Dedicated to our value of collective formation and the inward journey, we will have a dedicated space for spiritual direction and formation. This space will be available freeof-cost for individuals and groups so that individuals and groups can further their connection and relationship with the Divine and Sacred.
School for Liberation
We will continue to offer classes and teach-ins through the School for Liberation (formerly called the Servant Leadership School) on a range of topics including spiritual development, prayer, community organizing, addressing white supremacy, and deep dives on specific social justice issues.
O’Connor Chapel
Located on the first floor will be the newly named O’Connor Chapel, named after Elizabeth O’Connor, a long-time leader of the Church of the Saviour who wrote numerous books that spread the work and message of the church to people all over the world.
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CAMPAIGN PRIORITIES
To reimagine the home of the Festival Center, we must raise $4 million. Gifts of all sizes will ensure that The Festival Center continues to sit at the intersection of hospitality and justice for years to come. You can leave a lasting legacy and further our mission by pledging your support to our building campaign. This is a comprehensive list of giving opportunities that will allow you to attach a corporate name, your name, or that of a special person in your life, to a designated space in the renewed Festival Center Building.
Name the Festival Center Building $1,500,000 The Festival Center has stood at the center of three important neighborhoods in Northwest DC and at the intersection of faith and justice for over three decades. With a gift of $1,500,000, or more you can create a lasting legacy of hospitality and justice with the opportunity to name the Festival Center building on 1640 Columbia Road NW.
Cosby Hall $1,000,000 The heart of the Festival Center is our first-floor large conference room where so many of the worship services, meetings, celebrations, weddings, memorial services, conferences and so much more takes place. Likewise, the heart of our mission lies in the original vision of Gordon Cosby and the small group of people he worked with to make the vision of the Festival Center a reality. We want to keep Gordon and Mary Cosby’s vision and name alive for decades to come.
Green the Building $600,000
Through a new HVAC system, insulation, LED lighting, and solar panels, we will dramatically lower energy usage and bring us closer to carbon neutral. Buildings produce the greatest amount of carbon emissions in large cities and we are doing our part to shrink our carbon footprint.
Creating a Co-Working Space $300,000 In keeping with Gordon Cosby’s dream of the second floor being an “incubator space” for new ministries and new works to be birthed, we are creating a co-working space specifically for faith communities and start-up justice organizations that cannot afford expensive office space in Washington, DC. Not only will they have a space to work and meet, we will partner with them and support their work of building movements for justice in practical and needed ways.
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The Festival Center has been my place of solace, worship, celebration and recovering from life’s challenges. It is a beautiful place for art, dance, spirituality, brainstorming, and prayer meetings. I have met brilliant people from all over the world, and right across the street! This is truly my lovely home away from home.
Minister Kumi Alatish
Church of Christ Right Now
For me, the Festival Center has become a place where I know that I can build community, deepen my call to justice, and quietly listen for what is going on in my interior space and for the movement of the Divine.
Leanne Finamore Student, School for Liberation
Kitchen $300,000
A training space for individuals to be trained in culinary arts and food service jobs. The kitchen will also be used to support events, meetings, and celebrations in Cosby Hall.
Securing the Building $100,000 An essential part of providing hospitality to all who enter the Festival Center is ensuring their safety while they are here. Through the creation of a vestibule to our front entrance and a state-ofthe-art security system we will ensure a safe space for the faith communities and justice organizations that meet and work here.
Lobby $50,000 Perhaps the most important space in our building because this is where all who enter meet the Festival Center for the first time. This is the space where we hope all people will feel welcomed and invited to join us in our mission to build movements for justice.
Gallery $50,000 The Festival Center has long been a place where faith and artistic expression meet. We are expanding our capacity to showcase the efforts of local and often marginalized artists. Our hope is to foster creative faith expressions of God’s desire for love and justice in the world.
Meeting Rooms $100,000
In light of the pandemic that forced us to meet one another in new ways virtually more often than in-person, we are planning state-ofthe-art technology in each of our meeting rooms so that, in the “new normal” post-pandemic meetings can be a hybrid of virtual and in-person.
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If you share the dream of a just future... If your heart is moved by the possibilities of a world filled with love...
join us.
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It’s there off on the horizon where you can almost see it: a space where faith leaders and all people are welcomed, where new works and ministries are dreamed of and implemented, where leaders are trained to serve in justice movements, and where the work for justice is held sacred. Building on the strong roots of our founding, the same calling drives us still today. We won’t reach it without hard work. That work will require a lot of us all. That work begins at the Festival Center. And we can’t realize this promise without your help.
This is work that needs many hands. This is work that needs you. Please help us renew our home. Your generosity will strengthen movements for change in our communities. You will break the chains of oppression and strengthen the ties of love.
THE FESTIVAL CENTER 1640 Columbia Road NW Washington DC 20009 202.328.0072 www.festivalcenter.org