Starter Kit. Idea 387 of 500. Cluster 19
A residents' guide and interpretation service for Galle Fort
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
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.
Ask first
- Department of Archaeology. Ask which buildings in the Fort have records a resident guide could draw on.
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask whether guides working inside the Fort must be licensed, and how.
Check before you spend
That every guide is licensed where that is required, that residents named on a walk agree to it, and that each story is checked against the records.
Find out these three numbers
- What would a visitor pay for a walk led by a resident?
- How many residents would guide, or open a doorway to visitors?
- What share of each fee would residents want to keep?
A comparison from the book
Galle Fort. Chapter Five
"In 1988 the Fort had 2,700 residents. By 2020 it had a little over 1,000"
Paying residents to tell the Fort's story gives them one more reason to stay in it.
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.