A residents' guide and interpretation service for Galle Fort

A first step

Ask 5 households still living in Galle Fort whether one member would guide a 90-minute walk through their streets, explaining the houses, the families and the changes they have seen. Write the route with them and agree a fee per guest paid to the guide. Offer 10 places a week through 2 guesthouses in the Fort for a month. Guests who send others, and residents who want to guide again, are the proof.

Who pays first

A visitor staying in the Fort who wants to hear the place explained by the people who live there, not read it from a sign.

What leaves today

The Fort's story is told by outsiders while its residents move away; paying residents to tell it keeps the income, and a reason to stay, with the people who live there.

The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.

The test

Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?

The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.

In the book

• Ch. FiveThe Most Photographed Rock in the World
  Galle Fort, Venice and what heritage funnels do
• Ch. ThreeWhat We Have Already Built
  Geoffrey Bawa's tropical modernism and the Aman resorts

More from cluster 19

• 381A film-location service: crews, permits, fixers and locations, sold to the studios of India and Europe
• 382Documentary production about the island's own stories, sold to the streaming platforms
• 383A museum shop worthy of the museum, at the National Museum, at Anuradhapura, at Galle
• 384Digitisation of the palm-leaf manuscripts and colonial archives as a paid service to the libraries of the world
• 385Architecture tours of Bawa's buildings with the houses opened by their owners
• 386Heritage-building restoration firms with the skills to work on the forts and the villas

All 15 ideas in this cluster