DI is Very DIY

Hi everyone!

I just finished a big project, something that I have been working on for a long time, since the start of the year! This project involved lots of teamwork, training, preparation, and skills to do well in. Yes, I am talking about Destination Imagination.

If you don’t know, Destination Imagination (commonly known as DI), is a massive competition held all over the world. People from before preschool, all the way to university, go to their local competitions in open-ended challenges, where they have multiple months to solve these challenges, and present their solutions to appraisers at their local competition. If they win their local competition, they will go to Provincials. If they win that, Nationals, and etc.

I was in the Improvisational group, and we had to research certain festivals. My group did La Tomatina, Kwita Izina, The Marrakech Popular Arts Festival, Floriade, Cooper Hill Cheese Rolling Festival, Buenos Aires Tango Festival, Pushkar Camel Fair, and the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival. These are all very different festivals, and are all extremely interesting in their own ways. The difference between our challenge compared to all the other challenges, was that we didn’t have a lot of preparation, as we had the IMPROV challenge. We improvised everything on the spot!

We may not have had the most preparation, but we certainly had a lot of time to spare, which we spent organizing, thinking of ideas that we could use for our solution, and making sure we knew everything about all the festivals we were doing. My favourite thing we did as a group in the lead-up to the competition was practicing the challenge itself. Our team manager made slips of paper we could use for our goals, forks in the road and challenge so it was all random and we didn’t know what we were going to do. These slips of paper were made to be the most random goals and forks in the road, to make it seem more like the competition.

What I think I learned the most was my teamwork. I learned to not always use my ideas, and not to take charge too much. I let other people use ideas, though I did share my ideas too. I got a lot better at my improv skills, and as this was my first time competing in Destination Imagination, I learned what this event was, and how to do well in it.

My teammate’s blogs!

Here’s a video of our performance!