Starter Kit. Idea 31 of 500. Cluster 2
Cinnamon peeling demonstrations on working smallholdings
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
Visit a cinnamon smallholder and ask whether visitors could watch the peelers at work for an hour and try the knife themselves. Offer the grower a share per visitor and the chance to sell quills on the spot. Bring the first small group yourself. Paid entry, and quills sold on the day, are the proof.
- Who pays first
- Visitors on the southern coast who have eaten cinnamon all their lives and never seen a quill being peeled.
- What leaves today
- True cinnamon leaves the island as bark in bales; the peeling itself, which nowhere else can show, earns nothing from visitors yet.
Ask first
- Department of Export Agriculture. Ask which cinnamon growers they know who could host visitors, and what support exists.
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask whether a farm demonstration for paying visitors must register.
Check before you spend
That the grower agrees and is paid fairly, that knives and the peeling area are safe for visitors, and what insurance covers them.
Find out these three numbers
- What would a visitor pay to watch peeling and take home quills?
- Which months do the growers actually peel cinnamon?
- How many tour vehicles pass the smallholding each week?
A comparison from the book
Sri Lanka House. Chapter Seventeen
"Gem cutting. Cinnamon peeling. Handloom weaving. Mask carving."
Cinnamon peeling is one of the book's live crafts, and it sells the bark too.
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.