Divergent Party

I wanted to do a program for the upcoming release of the Insurgent movie, so I decided to throw a Divergent party! This was actually my last young adult program at this branch. I’m leaving this position next week, so, though this was a very fun program, it was also bittersweet.

I wanted to design a party similar to the Harry Potter program from last month so that the teens could have a few options for activities and float around to whatever struck their fancy.

I started with a sorting station with a laptop on which I’d pulled up the official faction sorting quiz on the Divergent website. Next to it, I placed some Hershey’s miniatures that were marked for each faction. I got the idea from Inksplasher, but sadly their printable doesn’t work, so I had to format the wrappers myself which involved a bit of trial and error.

After they were sorted, we had a table for each faction with decorations and an activity inspired by the manifesto of each group as well as their element (i.e. blue water for Erudite, soil for Amity, glass for Candor, fire/charcoal for Dauntless, and stone for Abnegation). First, we had our Dauntless. I decided that since Dauntless values bravery with a bit of recklessness, we would sum that up with truth or dare.

We also would have done temporary tattoos here, but I had the brilliant idea to buy tattoo transfer paper on Amazon to print out our own instead of buying pre-made tattoos, and ($19 later) I discovered that the inkjet transfer paper doesn’t work even when you follow all the instructions.

Then, we had Abnegation. Since Abnegation is all about selflessly serving others, I decided we’d have a card making station for soldiers serving overseas.

Next was the Amity station. I decided we’d sum up friendship with a friendship bracelet making station.

Then came Erudite with a bit of trivia as well as some free bookmarks for our friends who value knowledge above all else.

Finally, we had Candor with a game of would you rather which forced the players to be honest about their choices and summed up the emphasis on honesty perfectly.

For our Divergent table (for those who fit into more than one faction), we had Cranium since it basically combined all the different factions. If you’re not familiar with Cranium, it is like Trivial Pursuit, Pictionary, charades, and a few other games all rolled into one.

Overall, this was a pretty cheap program. I think the total (minus the tattoo transfer paper that didn’t work) was about $20, and we had a nice turnout since I timed it so close to the movie release.