MakerFest is Coming July 18-19 to the Old PC Fairgrounds
Makerfest features live music, maker vendors, hands-on demos, food, car and bike shows, a community repair clinic, a Sunday cooking competition, and plenty of “I made that” energy.
UC Makerspace’s big summer fundraising event is a celebration of the people who build, repair & restore, cook & craft, weld, print & paint, sew & solder, carve & race – and who sometimes think they can fix that thing just before they make it even worse.
This is a weekend where folks from all over the Upper Cumberland with amazing talent showcasing what creativity looks like when it moves out of the garage and into the fairgrounds.
The profits help secure UC Makerspace and Imagine Foundry, a permanent home for creative learning, entrepreneurship, hands-on education, food business incubation, and community-powered problem-solving in the Upper Cumberland.
Makerfest sponsors make this event possible and help UC Makerspace and Imagine Foundry secure a permanent space for tools, training, entrepreneurship, community kitchen access, youth and adult programming, repair culture, local makers and hands-on learning.
This is your opportunity to market your business to families, creators, entrepreneurs, hobbyists, tradespeople, small business owners, and those who own seven drills but still buy another one when it goes on sale.
Makerfest will have live music rolling all weekend long giving the whole fairgrounds a great atmosphere. We’re bringing in musicians to help set the tone while folks shop, eat, race, wander, show off their builds, and hopefully, stick around for the day. The music won’t just be background noise. It’ll be part of what makes the event feel alive.
Expect a mix of local sound, festival energy, and easygoing summer atmosphere. The kind of music that will make MakerFest seem like a pretty great place to spend the afternoon.
It will be full of artists, crafters, woodworkers, food makers, leatherworkers, fiber artists, upcyclers, t-shirt makers, jewelers, inventors, builders, small businesses, and all kinds of creative folks showcasing what they make at Makerfest’s Vendor Market.
Shop handmade goods, discover local makers, pick up something unique and meet the the folks who made the things. Booths might be selling finished products, while others may be showing how they make them.
Just know, we’ll have a market of useful, beautiful, strange, clever, delicious and some completely unnecessary things you will suddenly need to own.
We want makers / artists / crafters / builders / food creators / small businesses / creative entrepreneurs to join us. If you make it, bake it, build it, carve it, stitch it, laser it, pour it, weld it, grow it, or legally attach googly eyes to it, we want to hear from you.
Vendor booths work for people who want to sell products, show their work, promote a creative business, engage the community or participate in a festival built around hands-on creativity.
The Makerfest Motor Show on Saturday features classic cars, modern builds, motorcycles, trucks, hot rods, rat rods, vintage rides, custom restorations, work-in-progress projects, and mechanical oddities.
This is about more than shiny paint – although shiny paint is welcome. It is about craftsmanship, restoration, fabrication, personality, and the stories behind the machines.
See the line-up, see the details, compare builds, take photos, vote for your favorites from all sorts of vehicles from showpieces to custom dream machines, all while helping out two amazing causes.
Winners may receive trophies, plaques, ribbons, sponsor-provided prizes, gift cards, featured social media shoutouts, and the deeply valuable right to casually mention their award in conversations for the next several years.
Some prizes may be tied to specific sponsors or categories, and we’ll announce final award details before the event.
Makerfest Hot Wheels Racing brings pocket-sized speed, questionable bragging rights, and real competition to the festival.
Kids, adults, collectors, casual racers and tiny-car engineers can race on our track to win awesome prizes. Some racers arrive with a car right out of the blister pack. Others may bring modified machines built for speed, balance, weight and pure downhill glory. Either way, Hot Wheels racing turns a small orange track into the most intense sporting event within six feet.
Makerfest uses Hot Wheels Racing League-style rules, with two age brackets, kids and adults. Each racer may enter up to 2 vehicles in each class. Registration is free for kids and donation-based for adults.
Winners may receive trophies, plaques, ribbons, sponsor-provided prizes, gift cards, Hot Wheels cars and displays, or tool kits.
Want to race? Bring your fastest car, your prettiest car, your weirdest car, or the car you swear is “just stock except for a little graphite and a dream.”
We’re also looking for volunteers and sponsors to help make the racing area run smoothly.
Power Wheels Racing brings battery-powered mini vehicles, backyard engineering, wild creativity and family-friendly track action to Makerfest.
Here modified kid-sized vehicles become rolling works of chaos, creativity and questionable aerodynamics. Think tiny race cars, mini Jeeps, plastic trucks, custom paint, homemade upgrades, dramatic cornering, and people cheering way too hard on machines meant to just whiz around a driveway at walking speed.
Makerfest hopes this feature becomes an official Power Racing Series stop. That might not come through in year one, but we hope to make Makerfest a points race by 2027.
Makerfest Power Wheels Racing will be built around the spirit of the Power Racing Series, with final event rules announced before registration opens.
Possible requirements include:
For complete rules, click here.
Winners may receive trophies, plaques, ribbons, sponsor-provided prizes, gift cards, tool kits and more.
Participants can register a vehicle, build a team, sponsor a car, donate parts, help with safety inspections, volunteer for race operations, or sponsor the track itself.
This also creates great sponsorship opportunities because every vehicle can become a tiny rolling billboard for creativity, teamwork, and mild mechanical nonsense.
Makerfest attendees can bring things to the Repair Clinic like small household items, basic electronics, toys, small appliances, tools, bikes, jewelry and other repairable objects for volunteer fixers to examine. Part service, part education, part community hangout, and part gentle rebellion against disposable culture.
We can not promise that everything can be repaired, but we promise we will try, explain what we see and give you advice on next steps if we cant.
The goal is simple: Help people learn, save useful things when possible and show how handy repair skills are.
NOTES: Repairs are not guaranteed. Some items may require parts. Some repairs may not be possible on site. Volunteers may decline unsafe, impractical, or overly complex repairs. Donations are encouraged. Attendees may be asked to sign a basic waiver
We’re looking for repair-minded people who want to share their skills with the community.
That may include electricians, jewelers, bike mechanics, small engine folks, sewing and textile repair people, tinkerers, appliance repair techs, tool repair people, woodworkers, electronics hobbyists, general handypeople, and anyone who enjoys figuring out why something stopped working.
You don’t have to know how to fix everything. You just need a useful skill, a little patience, and the willingness to help people understand what they brought in.
Makerfest is swapping the usual “serious athletic competition” thing for something much better: inflatable costume races.
Picture a lineup of giant inflatable dinosaurs, animals, characters, mystery creatures, and whatever else people manage to zip themselves into, all wobbling, bouncing, flailing, and sprinting their way across the track while the crowd loses its mind.
The featured race will be Inflatable Dinosaur Racing, because watching a herd of T-rexes try to run with tiny arms is the kind of joy the world needs more of. But other inflatable costumes are welcome too, so don’t be surprised if a dinosaur gets chased down by a shark, unicorn, alien, or chicken.
This is one of those Makerfest moments built purely for fun, photos, cheering, and the kind of laughter that makes people want to come back year after year.
Have an inflatable dinosaur costume at home? Bring it. Have another inflatable costume that deserves its moment in the sun? Also bring it.
We’ll be inviting participants to enter inflatable costume races during Makerfest. Dinosaurs will be the main attraction, but other inflatable costumes are welcome as long as they’re safe, wearable, family-friendly, and raceable.
Participants should be ready to run, wobble, sweat, laugh, and possibly question their life choices halfway down the track.
We’ll be handing out prizes from our sponsors as well as trophies for each category
Makerfest will be a big, loud, creative, slightly ridiculous community event that will need a solid crew of volunteers to haul around duct tape and a clipboard without anyone having to run across the fairgrounds. Probably.
We’ll need volunteers for all sorts of things all over the fairgrounds. People to help organize, move people and things, help keep things running smoothly, and general “someone pointed this way so here I am” duties.
The people who make Makerfest a reality are our volunteers. No need to be a professional event planner, mechanic, artist, or festival wizard. You just have to be reliable, friendly, willing to help, and open to rolling with a little chaos. If this is you, we may have a spot for you.
Some roles will be active and outdoors. Some will be seated or lower-impact. Some may require comfort talking with guests, while others are better for folks who’d rather move tables, hang signs, sort supplies, or quietly save the day from behind the scenes.
Whether you can help for a full day, a single shift, or just during setup or cleanup, we’d love to have you involved. Volunteers help keep the event running, support UC Makerspace and Imagine Foundry’s mission, and make it possible for the community to enjoy a weekend full of music, making, racing, repairing, food, and wonderfully weird festival energy.
Makerfest supports UC Makerspace and Imagine Foundry’s work to create a permanent home for hands-on learning, maker education, community kitchen access, food entrepreneurship, repair culture, and creative economic development in the Upper Cumberland.
Every ticket, sponsorship, vendor fee, donation, and volunteer hour helps us move closer to giving this region the creative infrastructure it deserves.
Yes. Makerfest is designed as a family-friendly community event with activities for kids, adults, makers, car lovers, music fans, and curious humans. hands-on community programs in the Upper Cumberland.
Nope. You can just enjoy the music, food, vendors, races, cars, demos, and general festival fun.
Yes, vendor applications will be available for makers, artists, food producers, and creative small businesses.
Absolutely. Sponsorship opportunities will be available for the stage, races, car and bike show, repair clinic, cooking competition, kids activities, vendor areas, and more.
We’ll do our best, but repairs are not guaranteed. Some items may need parts, may be unsafe to repair on site, or may require professional service.
Proceeds support UC Makerspace and Imagine Foundry’s mission to build creative, educational, entrepreneurial, and