Starter Kit. Idea 23 of 500. Cluster 2
Multi-day culinary residencies
The mechanism, from the book
The craft cannot be copied and the object can. In Europe people queue to watch glass being blown and then buy the glass.
The first step
Draft a 5-day residency, one region's cooking each day, and send it to 10 cookery schools and food writers abroad asking whether their students or readers would book it. Ask for a price they consider fair and dates that suit. Three replies that name a price, or one school asking to bring a group, is your proof.
- Who pays first
- Cookery schools and food clubs abroad that take groups on culinary trips and need a partner who can teach, house and feed them.
- What leaves today
- Recipes from the island are taught abroad by others; a residency sells the source of that knowledge directly, for days rather than hours.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask how a residency with rooms and classes registers as tourist accommodation.
- the area Medical Officer of Health. Ask what standard a teaching kitchen used every day needs to meet.
Check before you spend
That the rooms and the kitchen are both covered by the right registration, that suppliers are reliable for several days running, and that insurance covers guests throughout.
Find out these three numbers
- What do culinary residencies abroad charge for a week?
- How many cooks and helpers does a residency need?
- Which cooking schools or food writers abroad would send students?
A comparison from the book
Sri Lanka. Chapter Five
"with somebody's grandmother, and they go home able to cook it for"
Guests go home able to cook it, and that brings their friends next.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.