If you’ve visited my blog before, you would have seen multiple posts on this tournament called Destination Imagination, an organization aiming to see what kids can imagine and create performances and compete against each other on a global scale. Within Destination Imagination, or “DI”, there are many different challenges that teams choose to compete in, and they relate to different subjects, like “Engineering Challenge” or “Fine Arts Challenge”. Being in the performance learning program, I have done Destination Imagination three times, and have done different challenges for each year. I believe over these past three years doing DI, my level of engagement has increased and I have come to enjoy Destination Imagination more and more as I continued to do it over the years. DI is definitely one of the more stressful projects I have ever encountered, but the relief and gratitude you feel after competing at the tournaments compensates for the time spent creating and developing ideas for the tournament and final product. Over these three years, I have also noticed my teams have been doing better in the final standings and collaboration between groups has become much easier through the process of Destination Imagination. In this post, I will be taking you through the process of creation for the DI presentation and the tournament.

I guess I’ll start from the beginning, which was way back in the month of October. Destination Imagination was something our PLP class wasn’t so excited to do for a third straight year. This year, I was really interested with some of the challenges, especially the scientific challenge, which was to build an attraction that was set in an unlikely location. I was not so excited to do some of the other challenges, so I am quite relieved I didn’t get those challenges.

Along with Simon, Reid, Will and Alex, we were assigned the scientific challenge. I was really excited to be in this group, and although it was an all boys group, I still thought at the time that it would work out really well and we could create a very good performance.

To start out, we began throwing out some ideas for our attraction. The attraction was supposed to have someone be able to go in the ride and it would operate without any problems. We obviously weren’t going’s to create a roller coaster, or any large attraction. It didn’t have to be super amazing, it just had to be really creative and have a purpose in the unlikely location. My idea was to create a canoe, which I thought would be a very small attraction. I chose this idea because it was small enough to fit in our space and it would be easier to fit with our location. For our location, we just began spit balling ideas, trying to figure out the most unique location for our presentation. Then somebody mentioned a volcano, and all of us were hooked by the idea. We had our attraction and a location, but now it was time to figure out some sort of plot or storyline, so that our presentation isn’t to random or anything.  Again spit balling ideas, I randomly said “fish”. It seemed like a really strange idea at first, but then we began building on the fish idea, and afterwards it sounded like a really cool idea. The imaginary “lava fish” were eating the volcanic rock within the volcano, which then released lava into the nearby town. By that point we were set. We had a location, a ride concept and a story line. Now it was just time to execute our plan.

In order to complete this project as efficiently as possible, we divided each other into separate groups. Some people would be more storyline based, and other would be focused on the stage set up and technical and scientific side of the ride. This was quite a lengthy process, as we had to communicate back and forth between each other to make sure both the storyline and ride made sense with what we were all doing. Once we had finished our storyline and script, and a rough draft of the canoe idea was finished, it was time to build the attraction.

Using cork board and an empty plastic bucket, Alex and I created the base of the canoe, unfortunately Alex and I were to caught up in doing this process with just the two of us so we forgot to record or take any pictures, but I do have this video of us spray painting the attraction a green colour.

Once we had finished spray painting the attraction, it was time to attach the two bars that would sway the canoe back and forth. The bars had to be strong enough to both sway the canoe and for somebody to sit comfortably in the canoe without it being too dangerous. The ride looked a bit sketchy at first, and it looked as if it would break easily, but the bars were placed evenly and the ride was safe to use.The attraction was complete, our script was done, and the last thing to do before the regional exhibition was to complete the forms. For two years, I have been doing the forms, which is all about explaining the presentation and telling the judges what we worked on and what our team choice elements.

On the date of the exhibition, we presented well. I was really proud of what my group created and the presentation we pulled off was amazing in the eyes of everybody we talked to afterward.

 

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