Starter Kit. Idea 383 of 500. Cluster 19
A museum shop worthy of the museum, at the National Museum, at Anuradhapura, at Galle
The mechanism, from the book
Eight World Heritage Sites and 2,300 years of records, and the country's story is told to the world by other people.
The first step
Walk round the shop at the museum nearest you and list what it sells, what it costs and what a visitor would have wanted to take home. Then have 10 sample products made by local makers, each tied to the collection, and ask the museum's director whether you may sell them from a table for one weekend. The weekend's takings are your case for a shop.
- Who pays first
- A visitor leaving a museum who wanted something worth taking home and found only postcards, now able to buy a well-made object tied to what they saw.
- What leaves today
- Museum visitors spend their souvenir money on imported trinkets or nothing; a real shop keeps it with local makers and the museum.
Ask first
- Central Cultural Fund. Ask whether a trial sales table could stand at one of their sites.
- National Crafts Council. Ask which local makers could supply products tied to a collection.
Check before you spend
The museum's written permission to sell, permission to use images from the collection on products, and the terms of any revenue share.
Find out these three numbers
- What would visitors have wanted to take home?
- What were the takings from the trial weekend?
- What does each sample product cost to make?
A comparison from the book
Sigiriya's car park. Chapter Five
"And there is nothing to buy that is from there."
A visitor at a great site wants to spend; give them something made from that place.
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.