What is Destination Imagination

For the past four months in PLP we have been working really hard on a thing called Destination Imagination aka DI. DI is a series of challenges that teams spend time to solve. There are 6 challenges which are the technical, scientific, engineering, fine arts, improv, and service learning. In PLP we had teams in every challenge except service learning because last year it was such a train wreck. The other part of DI are the instant challenges. Instant challenges are where you go into a room with your team and appraisers and you are given a quick challenge to solve. There are performance based ones that normally involve a mini skit, there are task based one where you normally or creating a device, and there are combination ones which have a bit of both. You normally have a very limited amount of time to complete this and quite often a lot of points come from creativity and teamwork.

My Team’s Challenge

My team was made up of Paisley, Nik, and Lucy. We called ourselves Basically G.O.A.T meaning we’re basically the greatest of all time. Our team was in the fine arts challenge which this year was to perform a two-act musical. We had to:

  • Create and present a musical that includes a change in plans.
  • Include music and lyrics that enhance the storytelling.
  • Create and present a spectacle as part of the musical.
  • Design and integrate a set change into the musical.
  • Create and present two Team Choice Elements that show off the team’s interests, skills, areas of strength, and talents.

The Solution

We each had so many ideas for our musical it was hard to pick just one. Our story ended up being about a family that gets stranded on a deserted island but then find a boat and survive. The first act was being on the island, and the second act was our celebrating once we were on the boat.

 

We had a sad song in the first act about one of the characters going missing, and the second song was a celebration of finding the boat. They were both parodies to real songs because we thought it would sound better and it is fun for the audience.

Our spectacle included costumes for every character and choreography for the second song. To go along with our deserted island theme we had the main characters wearing stereotypical tourist clothes and our narrator wore all black to signify she wasn’t in the story. Our dance included very simple actions and a kick line to show us celebrating our survival.

 

Our set change was made by projecting an image onto a sheet of paper using a projector. For the first act we had a picture of the view from an island and for the second act we had a picture of the inside of a boat.

Team Choice Elements

Team choice elements are where your team gets to add in whatever talents or skill they have to help the story.

Team Choice #1: Our first team choice element was showing my gymnastics skill. I have done gymnastics for a long time and i wanted to incorporate one of my cool moves into the musical.

Team Choice #2: Our second team choice cement was originally going to be a boat horn but then we realized I didn’t have a boat to walk on stage with. So about a week before regionals we made a boat out of cardboard and paint.

Regionals

After almost four months of hard work the day had finally come. It was regionals! For all of the grade eights this was very nerve-racking as this is our first time doing DI but as the day went on we all got very used to the environment. It was also a very fun day since it was Aedan’s birthday (he is one of my classmates). My team spent the morning going around the school (Seycove) to watch the other PLP performances as my team’s was in the afternoon. Our instant challenge was at 11:15 and it went really well as we ended up winning the highest score for it. Then it was time for our performance which we were very nervous about for many reasons. One of them being we had never practiced with a projector and none of us really knew how they worked so it took a while to set up and it didn’t really work. I will now let you watch this performance but before you do please take note that we are doing a lot of revision for Provincials and we have learned from our critique.

Reflection

DI is a very difficult thing to do as it requires a lot of hardwork, time, and thinking. It has helped me become way better at working in groups and listening to other people’s ideas. It has also made me so much better at quick thinking. Before DI I would always try and think everything out for a long time even when told not to. With all of the instant challenges I got much better at coming up with something logical or smart on the spot. I had a lot of fun working with my group to do this and I’m excited for how amazing we are going to be at Provincials!