Roald Dahl’s Stories Inspire Minecraft Worlds & Creative Writing
For the second consecutive year, Minecraft Education partnered with The Roald Dahl Story Company for the Imaginormous Challenge, a creative writing program for students in the U.S. Over 5,000 students ages five to twelve entered creative stories for the chance to have their story-idea bought to life in blocks. We invited the Roald Dahl team to pen a blog post about the competition, and why Minecraft inspires creativity.
Roald Dahl’s Imaginormous Challenge 2018
This Spring, Willy Wonka once again opened the gates to his chocolate factory and gave children from across America the chance to win one of five Golden Ticket prizes, with a little help from Roald Dahl’s Imaginormous Challenge. The contest, now in its second year, is a global creativity platform that aims to inspire children to create the most imaginative story ideas possible, summarised in 100 words or fewer.
The story-writing challenge takes its precedence from Roald Dahl himself, whose iconic stories often started as tiny ideas scribbled into one of his beloved “ideas books.” These little ideas would later become the stories, characters, inventions, and imaginative worlds featured in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The BFG, and many more.
To truly bring to life that even the smallest idea can turn into something spectacular, each of the five winners (who will be announced later in 2018) will have their story ideas transformed into one of five fantastic creations. One story will be built into a Minecraft world with the help of a team of Minecraft builders, including YouTube creator and Minecraft extraordinaire Stacyplays. The world will be downloadable from the Minecraft Education website, so that Minecraft players around the world can explore the story, and Stacyplays will explore the world in a video on her YouTube channel. (The 2017 Minecraft winner’s fantastical world, Fluffletopolis, can be downloaded and played right here.)
Joining the immersive and creative platform of Minecraft: Education Edition with the wonderful world of Willy Wonka was a perfect fit. Minecraft’s open world environment encourages players to build wondrous things, tell stories and go on adventures in mysterious and amazing worlds. Minecraft: Education Edition brings this creativity into classrooms, giving students a new way to visualize stories and express ideas. We can’t wait to read all the Roald Dahl inspired stories written by students, and then to explore them in a block-tastic Minecraft world!
Check out the new Fantastic Mr. Fox lesson and Minecraft world. We welcome you to share your class’s Roald Dahl inspired creations with us on Twitter or Facebook.
