Hi everyone! Welcome back to my blog. This time I will be writing to you all about my first experience with Destination Imagination in person! Destination imagination or DI for short is a hands-on, project-based educational experience that encourages creativity, collaboration, communication and critical thinking skills. Also known as the most stressful classes I have ever been in. But without any more interruption let’s dive right in!
DI is basically a challenge prompt that you and a few friends must solve through a performance (there’s also an instant challenge, but it’s not as significant). We were given 5 months on and off (because of other classes) to develop a new performance from scratch that reflects our team’s interests and fulfils the challenge prompt.
We were assigned to a group and given a task at the start of the project. I was assigned to a group with Alicia, Claire, Mickey, Nolan and Ewan, and we were given the Tricky Tales fine arts task.
Throughout this project we had to follow the stages of the creative process
For recognize my team and I had to fill out a project plan.
Story Deliverable
It was during this that we also started the next step Imagine.
Idea Generation Process
During this time, I wasn’t here for the first couple of classes because I was in Mexico for an extended winter break. (It was amazing.) When I got back my team already had a relatively concrete idea. But I did help with giving ideas to my team before I left which they then combined with their other ideas to form the final plan. The process leading up to the final idea was Nolan mentioning “creating cool mechanical wings.” Which then lead to having a steampunk theme for our play. Which then lead to having a clock as our central plot device, which did really help getting us a ton of points. Personally I prefer working with other people, I prefer being more reliant on other people so that we can collaborate multiple ideas into one big one. I go by the saying “Two heads are better than one.” This goes to show how powerful building off of other’s ideas can be.
Initiate and collaborate
The next step was to Initiate and Collaborate. The project included a variety of collaborative pieces of work. From building the wings and the clock to writing the script, everything was done by hand. The story and the clock, in my opinion, were the best collective efforts. The story was a collaborative effort. Everyone contributed ideas, some of which were insane and some of which were not very good, but when we combined them, we came up with a fairly fantastic plot.
The other area that we collaborated well was with the clock. This was much more hands on, with everybody pitching in to help paint it, and to get it working.
I was at a disadvantage because I wasn’t in DI last year because I still lived in Fort Mac so I wasn’t used to anything, to say in the least I was pretty lost at the start but my teammates guided me to the right path and I eventually got on top on what I needed to complete. At first I really disliked DI but looking back on everything I can appreciate why all of us were forced into DI. Now I’m going to write about everyone’s strengths used to create the play. Our script was written by Alicia, who excels at creative writing. Claire is an excellent seamstress, so she made the majority of our costumes. Nolan is highly talented in all of the critical components required to make this play; he performed a little bit of everything, but as our group’s engineer, he undoubtedly scored us a lot of points. With the clock and the wings. I played one of the main characters (the clock Wizard) I think I did a really good job by getting into character. Not to brag but I feel like I was the best in the play. Finally Luca worked on the illusion which was making a pocket watch float with fishing line (which I think was a really great idea!) Our team would be in shambles without Nolan and Alicia. I’m grateful to both of them because they put in the most effort out of all of us and were instrumental in our accomplishment. I would say Nolan and Alicia were definitely the group leaders. Whatever Nolan or Alicia told me I did without a complaint. Which worked out for all of us.
Nolan made the wings, What he did was he made a small scale prototype of the wings. He took them to class and showed us how they worked. You must be asking yourselves “How do they work?” well at the back Nolan would twist the crank which was attached to rope and the rope was attached to the wings which pulled the wings up. Making the wearer look like a steampunk jet pack guy thing.
Some pictures of the prototypes
[Prototype]
Prototype
[Final Wings]
After Nolan made the wings my team and I had to practice, practice, practice, and you guessed it a little more practice. Even with all of the practice the final play went eh. We missed cues, I messed up the cues for the music, Alicia knocked over the pole but besides that everything went peachy. I would say the cues was our biggest weakness. If we worked on cues a little more I feel like we could’ve scored so many more points. It doesn’t matter to much though because we still won the DI play. (We actually had the second most amount of points out of everyone there!)
Overall I would say the actually play went alright. I had to carpool with Ines, Mickey and, Claire which was a fun time I’d say. I forgot the name of the school we went to but that school was the most beautiful school I’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting, it felt like I was in a museum!
What did I learn?
Well I think I learned about how to effectively be in a team and contribute to the groups end goal. I definitely wasn’t the head of the team but I would say things that my team and I worked on and learned would be how to effectively work together and hand things in before the deadline. Another thing I noticed that Nolan and Alicia would assign our group members to tasks that played into their strengths which I appreciate. Something I would like to work on would try to be more of a leader. I feel like I am a natural leader but for this project I was more of a pawn that’s anything. I look up to Nolan and Alicia because they are the definition of great leaders and I would love to be more like them in the future.
Wowie that was a ton of writing and info about DI. Anyways, that was Destination Imagination in a nutshell. Overall I’d say this project went pretty smoothly but I feel like there could’ve been a ton of room for improvement. Not to name names, some people could’ve been better at getting into character but besides that I think things went well. There were still conflicts and stressful days, but in the end I would say it was pretty fun!
Thank you for reading. See y’all next time.