The Durham Performing Arts Center now has a private lactation pod available to guests during events.
You’ll find it on the second-floor orchestra lobby. Inside: a seat, a table, electrical outlets, and a mini fridge.
Those details matter more than they might look. Outlets mean you are not rationing a battery through a two-act show. A mini fridge means your milk is safe until you get home. A door that closes means you are not negotiating for privacy in a building full of strangers on a show night.
If you have questions about the space, DPAC’s Guest Experience Manager, Ashley Morgan, is glad to help: amorgan@dpacnc.com.
How we got here
In the spring of 2024, DPAC had no dedicated lactation space at all.
That May, Durham Technical Community College held its graduation ceremony at DPAC. Lauren, a longtime Breastfeed Durham volunteer and a new parent, was there. Not for a night out, but as one of the professionals working the event, for hours. When she looked for somewhere to pump, she was offered priority parking so she could go sit in her car.
That offer met the letter of the law. It did not meet her needs.
Lauren wrote to us. What followed was a series of conversations between Breastfeed Durham, the City of Durham, and DPAC that stretched across many months, and it all came down to one question.
What would a truly family-friendly DPAC look like?
In the spring of 2025, DPAC answered it. They opened a private, quiet room with comfortable seating for lactating guests, available by request. “I do believe this new space would have met Lauren’s needs,” Ashley Morgan told us at the time. She was right. It was real progress, and we said so.
And then they went further
This is the part we want to sit with.
Nobody asked DPAC for a pod. The problem had already been solved. A guest could email ahead, and a private room would be waiting for her. DPAC could have stopped there, and no one would have faulted them.
They went further anyway.
A lactation pod is not a small decision. It is a capital purchase, a floor-plan conversation, an installation, and a maintenance commitment, and it has to survive a budget cycle. We help organizations across Durham work through exactly this process, and we can tell you plainly: it routinely takes well over a year from “we should do this” to a parent actually walking through the door. DPAC did it in sixteen months, without being pushed.
And the difference for a parent is not small either. The old room meant emailing a stranger in advance, explaining your body and your schedule, and waiting for a yes. The pod means walking up to it and going in. One of those is an accommodation. The other is just a place that was built with you in mind.
What this says about Durham
Change like this takes two things. It takes someone willing to speak up, and it takes someone on the other side willing to listen.
Lauren spoke up about her own bad night and ended up changing the experience for every lactating parent who walks into that building. We are deeply proud of her.
And DPAC listened. Then they kept working long after the conversation had gone quiet, and delivered more than anyone asked for.