D.I. allowed us to take Deep Cove Rap to new heights! 🎤 Rap featured prominently in our set, rhyming and stealing the hearts of the judges. Inspired by the towering grandeur of the Burj Khalifa, these daring individuals embarked on a quest that would redefine the limits of their imagination.
But before we delve into the exciting climax of our performance, let’s rewind for a moment. ⏪
D.I. stands for Destination Imagination. We do Destination Imagination in PLP to unleash our creativity, develop our problem-solving skills, and learn how to collaborate with others. By engaging in challenges, we learn to think outside the box, adapt to unforeseen obstacles, and work together toward innovative solutions. These skills are essential for success in life and empower us to navigate the complexities of an ever-changing world with confidence and resilience.
This year, I chose to take on the Fine Arts Challenge. Back in January, I was teamed up with grade 9 students Baz, Caelum, and Hazel, as well as grade 10 students Dylan and Frankie.
Our challenge? To bring a work of visual art to life and craft our very own piece of kinetic art! We then had to develop an 8-minute performance centered around our creations, including a static and dynamic character. This performance would showcase our reimagined art and kinetic art pieces, as well as our two team choice elements. Below is a picture of what we were going to be awarded points for.
Crafting our story proved to be a challenging journey for our team. While selecting a work of visual art was relatively straightforward—we chose the Burj Khalifa for its potential to create an otherworldly setting—the narrative posed a significant hurdle. Initially centred around an adrenaline junkie-free solo climber sponsored by Red Bull scaling the Burj Khalifa and accidentally landing in heaven, our storyline quickly became convoluted as we attempted to incorporate all our ideas.
This complexity led to confusion, prompting us to embark on multiple rounds of rewriting and rethinking. Through perseverance and collaboration, we managed to untangle our narrative, prioritizing clarity and discarding any unrelated concepts.
With our newly refined story in hand, we were eager to bring it to life. However, the semester transition disrupted our plans, and our in-class time diminished. Our precious in-class time, where the whole team would show up, became a thing of the past. Despite this, we divided tasks amongst ourselves, with me taking the lead in writing the script. While the script wasn’t perfect, I infused it with humour and creativity to enhance our performance. Dylan created a prototype of our kinetic art piece, ensuring we had something to present at the first dress rehearsal. Despite only half of our team attending the rehearsal, we adapted our performance accordingly.
We received valuable feedback on how to improve our story from the teachers. They liked what we had so far, but there was still a lot of work to be done. We needed to make edits to our story so it was less about God and more of a mythological character like… Zeus! We also needed to adjust our reimagined art song to incorporate the Burj Khalifa more effectively. And we needed to build props.
The day of the D.I. Regional Tournament (March 2) was approaching quickly. One hurdle we faced as a team was when one of our group members deleted our entire script (by accident!) when trying to rearrange their Craft space. I was frustrated and kind of wanted to be mad, but instead, I laughed (because our script was really important and one of our most solid elements)—although I was positive, I didn’t feel like writing the script again. I kind of pushed the task aside and out of my mind for a week or so, and then me and my grade 10 peers went on a field study to Seattle in mid-February, and Ms. Willemse kindly reminded us that the D.I. Regional tournament was in less than 2 weeks. Yikes! We didn’t even have a script anymore! Let alone any props 😬. This was going to be great 😊!
My team had to get things sorted out in the final week leading up to D.I. If our team had gotten together in tutorial time to work on our solution every once a week in February, maybe we wouldn’t have had to do the majority of our work in the few days before the tournament. Anyhoo, in those last days before the tournament, I revised and added to our new script, made a boom arm prop out of a branch I found, a Perrier bottle, and some faux fur. Additionally, I took charge of completing the necessary forms and expense reports regarding our solution.
We finalized our team choice element choices: we were debating between rock climbing, sound effects, props, and costumes. We decided on the last two. Frankie and I created an awesome team sign in 30 minutes. You could say it was “on the Burj of Greatness”—just like everything else in our performance.
Seycove was hosting the tournament, so we had to clean and set up the rooms where teams were going to be presenting their challenge solutions the next day. The day before the D.I. regional tournament, I was pretty stressed. I had no idea how it was going to play out—my team was not ready, but we would show up and do our performance the next day.
On tournament day, we arrived at 8 a.m. to help with setup. Our presentation was scheduled for 1:05 pm, leaving us a few hours to get our act together. Baz crafted a Burj Khalifa from two by fours the night before, so we finally had our art piece, which was a central part of our challenge 😉. With some last-minute construction and ingenuity, we managed to prop it up just in time. Frankie’s idea to place our team sign on top added a finishing touch.
With the Burj Khalifa situation sorted, we ran through our performance, facing interruptions for feedback and line recalls. We made a spontaneous decision that the camera crew would rap the apology song. Despite not having a full rehearsal with our entire team, we were prepared to improvise as needed.
In the moments before our performance, standing before our towering prop adorned with our team sign, I felt proud of what my team had accomplished. Despite the challenges, we overcame obstacles and showcased our creativity in the final hours of preparation.
And then, it was showtime. We had a crowd of about 20 people.
With adrenaline coursing through our veins, we took the stage, ready to unleash the culmination of weeks of hard work and collaboration. Our performance was a whirlwind of rap, awesome kinetic art, humour, and passion. As the final notes of our performance echoed through the room, I looked around at my teammates, smiles of satisfaction on our faces. Our kinetic art, those mechanical gold wings crafted by Dylan, stole the show, mesmerizing both the audience and judges alike.
You can watch our regional performance here.
For our performance being our first full run-through with our whole team, we did quite well. The judges thought so too, I guess, because our performance earned us first place out of the 3 teams in our level! Yay!! 🥇 💪
Massive shoutout to Baz, the construction whiz who turned our last-minute chaos into a masterpiece, and Dylan for actually getting things done and for bringing our kinetic art idea to life.
To Frankie, who always manages to make me laugh, and who was a force behind the success of our performance. Special mentions to Caelum, for organizing the team’s schedule and for making a cool camera prop, and to Hazel, for bringing unique ideas to all our brainstorming sessions.
All in all, Destination Imagination was super entertaining. I laughed so much. It’s funny to see how people with extremely different personalities can come together to create an amazing solution to a challenge.
D.I. has been a transformative journey, teaching me to view failures as essential stepping stones toward success. I’ve sharpened my ability to adapt to obstacles and appreciate the diverse strengths of my team members. While there are numerous areas for improvement—preparation, time management, communication, problem-solving, and refinement of our ideas—I’m grateful for the lessons learned. As we prepare for the provincial tournament, I carry forward these lessons with me, ready to tackle whatever challenges come our way.
✌️ out!
✨Mic Drop ✨