Closing Celebration at Destination Imagination Global Finals
Each year, the top scoring Destination Imagination teams in each affiliate around the world qualify to send teams as representatives to Destination Imagination Global Finals. Often, over 1,400 teams – and about 10,000 students attend the world’s largest celebration and competition of creativity, collaboration and STEAM based problem solving. We are still growing the number of teams at the event. After 19 amazing years in Knoxville, Tennessee, Destination Imagination today announces that the event will move to Kansas City, MO starting in May, 2019.
“For nearly 20 years, we’ve had the privilege of calling Knoxville our second home and we are grateful to the University of Tennessee staff and the people of the City of Knoxville, who helped us to put on so many special Global Finals events,” said Michele Tuck-Ponder, DI Interim CEO. “With our increased growth at Global Finals, we want to continue providing a one-of-a-kind, creative and educational event for teams without compromising our attendees’ experience, including travel, accommodations and accessibility on-site. We’re excited about our move to Kansas City, where we will be able to house the entire event under one roof and give attendees the opportunity to completely customize their accommodations.”
“This is our largest booking in terms of room nights since 2008, and we couldn’t be more excited to welcome Destination Imagination to KC next year and again in 2020,” said Cori Day, Vice President of Sales & Services at Visit KC. “With its enormous international base, STEM component and 9,000 youth between the ages of preschool and college, Destination Imagination is a big win for Kansas City—a success that took the entire community coming together to make it happen.”
New Hampshire Destination Imagination would like to thank the staff of the University of Tennessee, the City of Knoxville and the State of Tennessee, all of whom have been very gracious hosts for the roughly 600 teams we have sent over the past 19 years. We have made a lot of good friends.
In addition, our organization wanted to use this opportunity to explore new ways for teams to showcase their creativity. Our new location will include a much-improved prop room experience where teams will have more space to construct props and the chance to display their creative designs beyond their eight-minute performance times.
Story from Destination Imagination | Press Release from Destination Imagination