!!! SMASHFEST 2025 !!!
We are calling on Durham to suit up, collect your rage, and assemble your teams for SmashFest 2025.
Whether your a nonprofit, work colleagues, book club, coven, or group of friends, we're inviting you to help us celebrate and smash on November 28th.
SmashFest can’t go down without some trusty helpers! Sign up to volunteer and help us set up the festival, answer questions from smashers, clean up and collect everything at the end of the day, and just overall have the day run smoothly.
This year we invite *YOU* to create a smashing contraption to share with the public at our signature annual fundraiser. We invite makers of all stripes to create a safe, entertaining, and creative device that shows off your maker skills, your artistic side, your penchant for destruction, your love of controlled chaos, or just your desire to join in on the fun.
OK but what IS Smashfest?
The origins of The Scrap Exchange’s “SmashFest” humbly began in 2011. After being forced to leave the Foster Street location after a roof collapse, the new space was in disarray. Palettes, craft supplies, and THINGS were everywhere! As the staff sorted through the palettes filled with donations, they started finding a lot of breakables... like, a lot a lot.
The idea to start smashing these breakables began as a joke, but due to the sheer amount of items floating around and the general rage simmering from the failed systems that forced the move, SmashFest arrived.
Affectionately held on Scrap’s anti-capitalist “Black Metal Friday”, the early eras of SmashFest featured local metal bands as a live soundtrack to people throwing breakables around.
SmashFest had simple beginnings. A handful of trash pandas, drinking in the parking lot, throwing stuff against a wall, releasing the built up tensions of the previous year.
After a very positive reaction to the first year (SmashFest now brings out over 1000 people!), the methodology and engineering that went into the smashing became more and more elaborate. Things went from “throwing stuff against a wall” to ever-evolving creative ways to smash materials, along with a deep exploration of what makes the best smash (spoiler- it's the paint filled tree ornaments).
There was a giant fist that crashed into 2016's “The Glass Ceiling”, a flaming toilet that fell from the sky, and bowling balls rolled through window pains. With this annual tradition, TSE has been able to develop a fundraiser that doubles as an annual communal art-therapy practice.
SmashFest has since grown into The Scrap Exchange's biggest fundraising event of the year. In 2024, around 1300 people attended Smash Fest and the event raised over $11,000 for The Scrap Exchange. This year, we hope to do all of that and more.