Destination: Imagination 2022

Way back in late 2021, we started being introduced to a project that PLP students know very well. Destination Imagination.

Pretty much every year except for a few (because of COVID), some grades of PLP do D.I, and spend months planning and getting ready for it.

What is DI?

Instead of trying to explain destination Imagination in a confusing paragraph that takes up half of this post, I’ll just link to the DI website where they explain it better and if you are already familiar with DI then you can just continue on. Explanation here

The Challenge 

My team was a part of the fine arts challenge, where we had to come up with a trickster, a tricky situation, a solution to that situation, a costume change, an illusion, and 2 team choice elements (elements of our presentation that use a skill our team has). We came up with a trickster named Felix who liked messing up peoples days, and accidentally messed up his own by going back in time and getting stuck. He ends up finding a way home in the end, and part of him going back was the costume change that happens to a little boy (me) that gets sucked into the time travel process and has his shirt light up and gets a new outfit via snap off clothes. Our illusion was a clock that would spin backwards via motor to give illusion that time is going backwards. Our two team choice elements were our paintings on a revolving backdrop, and a cool soundtrack with lots of time travel sounds and other environmental noises. All of these parts of the challenge were our plan, at the tournament, this is not exactly what happened. But before I tell you about that, I should tell you about my team, and our work together!

The Team

My team consisted of myself, Sophia, Amy, Jonny, and Josh. Our team name was [Insert Team Name Here]. Throughout the project we built our team skills by learning how each other operated and how we could work together best. Our teamwork greatly improved from start to finish and by the end we were all working together pretty much every day at lunch and after school. (I’m sure by the end we were all a bit sick of each other).

The Process 

When we first started planning the number one thing that I’d say we did wrong was our timeline. When we planned our timeline for everything that had to happen, we didn’t realize how much of our to do list was packed into the last week. So, we spent the first while panning our story and figuring out which props we needed and how we were going to do the backdrop. Then after spring break with a couple of weeks left, we made all of the props and the backdrop, along with the physical copy of the costume for the costume change. After we finished all that, the backdrop was finished the day before the competition, we were ready (ish) to perform.

The Execution 

At the competition, everything was chaos. To start I’ll list off what went wrong, and then afterwards I’ll tell you the good parts. First, our backdrop fell apart. We hadn’t tested it all together before the performance day, and it was all over the place being held together by duct tape. Secondly, the costume change went differently than expected when the lights were too dim to see properly and the snap off pants would take up too much time to prepare, because we got there an hour early, and by the time we had time to put it together, it was time to go on. Those were the two main things that went badly. The things that went good were the illusion clock, which worked well, and in the end we got through the performance without completely falling apart, so there’s that.

Here’s the video of our performance.

The Reflection 

I think that over the course of this project my team working skills have improved greatly, and even though this project was difficult and really tough, I’m super glad I did it and I do feel very accomplished now that it’s over. In the end my team came 2nd out of 3 in the main challenge, and 1st in our instant challenge!

I think the best evidence of my learning through this project would definitely be the time I put in. I think I invested a lot of time into the project and the team, and I think that’s the best evidence of my learning, especially in the teamwork department.

Thanks for reading this post! Be sure to comment and check out my team members posts to see their point of view!