TOM is a programme for school students through primary to secondary school where teams are tasked with solving open-ended challenges.
The programme runs in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, South Africa, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and sets challenges in four categories, the arts, language literature, social sciences and STEM.
The WIS team chose to take part in the arts, for which it had to choose a work from a famous artist and turn it into a 10-minute performance.
The team had only six weeks to create the performance from scratch and were not allowed any adult assistance, meaning the team had to write the script, rehearse and make any sets, props and costumes themselves.
“I could teach them the skills but I can’t help them do it so everything they did was completely student-driven which is awesome,” Dent said.
The team also had to create a soundscape and perform within a 3m by 3m square while also having four people in the square at all times.
WIS’s production was based on the Banksy work Hole in the Wall, one of the seven works the artist painted on the West Bank Wall of Palestine in 2005.
The work depicts two young children with buckets under a hole in the concrete wall showing an idyllic, photo-realistic beach scene on the other side.
For the team members, the hardest part of the challenge had been deciding on an artist and constructing the set and props for the production.
They were also marred by sickness in the last weeks leading up to the show and getting it all prepared came down to the wire, only having two five-minute breaks on the final day.
Despite this, they said their favourite part of the challenge was the process of creating the props for the installation and seeing it all come together.
Dent said at the competition they also had to do a spontaneous challenge where they were given three and a half minutes to do a one-and-a-half-minute presentation for the judges.
This challenge netted them a Spirit of TOM award, which she said they were already stoked about, so the overall win in the arts category came as icing on the cake.
“They were very surprised and the looks on their faces, it was just priceless ... words cannot describe how excited they were,” she said.
This win earned them a spot at the TOM national final where they will give another presentation but this time with only three hours to prepare.
The national finals are being held on September 16 at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University and Dent said they would do some practice runs of both the main challenge and improvisational challenge beforehand.
“To solve the challenge they’ve also got to make their props again, they’ve got to make their costumes, create a performance, write their scripts.”
A win at the nationals would give them an invite to Melbourne for the international final on October 19.
The team members said if everything went well and they improved their scores in a couple of sections, they were confident they could win.
Finn Williams is a multimedia journalist for the Whanganui Chronicle. He joined the Chronicle in early 2022 and regularly covers stories about business, events and emergencies. He also enjoys writing opinion columns on whatever interests him.
