What is Destination Imagination?
Destination Imagination (a.k.a DI) is where groups of students work to complete a challenge. The teams then present their solution for their challenge in a tournament. There were 4 challenges that we could do this year: Daring Escape: Technical, Festival Frenzy: Improvisational, Tricky Tales: Fine Art, and Up Close: Scientific.
My group’s challenge-
The challenge my group got was Festival Frenzy, which was the improv challenge (My group members were: Kira, Caitlin, Cameron, Magnus, Ronan). For the improv challenge, what we had to do was do a five minute improv skit, including: a randomly chosen goal, fork in the road, and festival. The skit had to have 2 acts, with an up to 30 second intermission. During the intermission, we were given the fork in the road, which was two options ( such as- take tuba lessons OR meet a long lost cousin. Or something random like that) that we would have to choose between, and incorporate it in the second act of the skit. The festival would be one from a list of festivals we were supposed to research. Another part of this challenge was the box set. The box set is a set of up to 10 cardboard boxes that can be used as props during the skit.
Here is my group-
What we did to prepare for our challenge
There were a few things we had to do to prepare for the tournament:
First was festival research, our skit had to be set at one of these festivals, so we had to research them.
Since we’re Middle level, we had to pick 8 festivals from the list of 16 we were given. Here are the ones we chose:
Argentine Tango Festival
Abu Simbel Sun Festival
Timpanogos Storytelling Festival
Chinese Lantern Festival
Cooper’s Hill Cheese Rolling Festival
Marrakech Popular Arts Festival
Floriade
Winterlude
We each chose a couple and researched them over Winter break. Later on, we printed all are research and put it all in a binder so we could easily access it.
Another thing we had to do is, of course, practice improv. One of our teachers gave us paper with the festivals, sample goals and forks in the road printed on them, so we could practice performing our skit.
What we did in our challenge
I was supposed to include a video of our performance, but I do not have one, so I’m going to tell you a quick summary of what happened:
Festival- Marrakech Popular Arts Festival
Goal- Make soup
Fork in the Road- summon a genie from a lamp OR (I forget what the other option was)
The story that we came up was that at the festival, there was an art contest, and Cameron forgot to bring an art piece. So, he decided to make a pot of soup and present that. I, who was also participating in the contest, was mad that Cam was entering the contest with a mere pot of soup. Randomly, Caitlin the merchant was selling magic lamps that had genies in them that could grant wishes. I borrowed $50,000 (I think, I don’t remember exactly) from Ronan to pay for one, and I wished to sabotage Cam and his soup. It didn’t really work, and he won anyways, and I was mad.
During the planning time, we worked pretty well together, and we didn’t speak over each other, and we listened to everyone’s ideas. This was the best our group had ever worked together. I think our story was pretty good, and we incorporated our box set nicely.
What I learned from DI
I learned that it’s important to listen and respect your group members ideas, and that with out that, no one will enjoy it, and it’ll just be a terrible experience overall. I also learned that it’s important that everyone in the group does their share of work, on time, so that one person isn’t working on it by themselves. Another thing I learned that arguing will get you nowhere, and for the most part, it’s just another way to waste time. If you’re group’s disagreeing, it’s better to talk it through and figure it out that way instead of going back and forth arguing till someone gives up.
Even though I got really stressed out before the tournament, after performing the skit, I realized that it wasn’t that big of a deal, and everything turned out fine.
One last thing I have to add is this thing we did in class afterwards, which has what we thought we did good, bad, and what needs improvement-
Concerning the title of this post-
I decided to call this post what it is because, while I was out walking my dog, I remembered this one movie I watched called Final Destination. And I thought- hey look a title for the blog post we’ll have to do. Final Destination is a great movie, and I highly recommend it. (The original, not the remake)
Thanks for reading!