DooDad Inaugural Competition

DooDad:  Lamppost Globes!

DooDad – Year 2

DooDad – Year 3

The cigar boxes returned for an encore,  more than 2,000 were requested, giving students another chance to saw, stack, paint, dismantle, and thoroughly reinvent a Tampa icon.

DooDad – Year 4

DooDad: Plastic water bottles and Gasparilla throw beads!

Hillsborough County students rescued two familiar pieces of Tampa’s post-celebration debris: plastic bottles and Gasparilla beads, and transformed them into fish, fountains, wildlife, wearable art, and wonderfully improbable contraptions.

DooDad – Year 5 – Tampa Bay in Paper Mache!

DooDad: Repurposed paper transformed through paper-mâché

Armed with paper, paste, and wonderfully ambitious imaginations, 976 students sculpted Tampa history, literary animals, and musical instruments into a sprawling paper-mâché portrait of the region.

DooDad – Year 6 – Tampa History, U.S. History, and Firefighters as Superheroes

DooDad: Discarded political campaign signs

After the election was over, students gave abandoned campaign signs something far more interesting to do:  transforming them into scenes from Tampa and American history, heroic firefighters, pirate ships, monuments, and even Sacagawea.

DooDad – Year 7 – Wildlife Conservation

DooDad: Aluminum cans, maps, and plastic straws

More than 500 students mapped the dangers facing wildlife by transforming discarded cans, maps, and straws into endangered animals, threatened habitats, and urgent messages about protecting the planet.

DooDad – Year 8 –  Shoes: Oh! The Places You’ll Go!

DooDad: Snack wrappers and plastic bags

Inspired by travel and life’s limitless possibilities, students turned throwaway wrappers and bags into fantastical footwear ready to walk, fly, and occasionally wobble toward the future.

DooDad – Year 9 –  Bees + Trees

DooDad: Cereal boxes, paper-towel tubes, and other paperboard packaging

In DooDad’s first virtual competition, students transformed the remains of breakfast and household life into buzzing ecosystems that explored the vital, and increasingly fragile, relationship among pollinators, plants, and people.

DooDad – Year 10 – Florida Native Flora & Fauna

DooDad: Award ribbons and plastics

Returning after a pandemic-era pause, DooDad celebrated its tenth competition with a gloriously Floridian menagerie,  students transformed old award ribbons and discarded plastics into spoonbills, manatees, owls, orchids, alligators, jellyfish, and other inhabitants of the Sunshine State.

DooDad – Year 11 – Water

DooDad: Fabric and household cardboard boxes, including at least one delivery box

Students unpacked Florida’s complicated relationship with water, transforming cast-off fabric and delivery boxes into sculptures inspired by oceans, rivers, wildlife, weather, recreation, and the precious resource flowing through it all.

DooDad – Year 12 – Florida Flying into the Future

DooDad: Used or obsolete school, household, or office materials of any kind

Florida’s future takes flight as young artists transform yesterday’s forgotten textbooks, cassette tapes, computer cords, office supplies, and household odds and ends into imaginative visions of tomorrow!