!!! SMASHFEST 2025 !!!
November 28th 2025 2-6pm
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 volunteer slots will open on November 1st***
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.
***registration open!***
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?
SmashFest began at the Scrap Exchange in 2011. After being forced to leave our home on Foster Street due to a roof collapse caused by landlord negligence our new space was in disarray. After first moving across the street and then across town there were barrels of mixed up materials, dirty fabric, crumpled cardboard boxes, not-so-clean industrial discards, and THINGS everywhere! It all needed to be sorted and made ready to open the Scrap back up to the public (and fast!) Hindering progress were all the damaged items and non-saleable breakables underfoot and hiding everywhere.
The idea to just have a party and smash all these lingering albatross items began half as a joke, but due to the sheer amount of them floating around and the general rage simmering from the failed systems that forced the move, SmashFest became a reality. “Black Friday” was chosen as the day for the event as a way of using the destruction of these items not only for some tension relief but also to highlight the gross nature of overconsumption and to question the celebration of corporations profiting at the expense of their workers and, ultimately, society at large. The darkness of the season perfectly matched the feelings which needed to be purged.
From its scrappy beginnings with metal bands, fire barrels, cheap beer, and some boxes of breakables SmashFest has become a parking lot sized event attended by thousands over the years. Each year the event grew and the need for it was ever increasing. The year the infamous HB2 was signed we dropped a flaming toilet from 20 feet in the air, we created a Glass Ceiling smasher, flaming conquistadores, and many other spectacles. It’s art meets destruction meets therapy meets family fun for all (kids LOVE SmashFest.)
SmashFest is now the Scrap Exchange’s largest annual fundraising event, raising over $10,000 per year and drawing ever larger crowds (1000+ visitors annually!) Attendees buy tickets while entering the event and use them to select from thousands of chipped or damaged items donated to our thrift store which you can then smash by the method you choose. The event now features Smash Gadgets as well as the infamous Smashwall. Drop a bowling ball on your breakable item, use a giant hammer to crush it or a guillotine to slice it. Who knows what comes next? Come celebrate our version of Black Friday and experience the giddy pleasure of destroying things with your friends, your family, your community.