A national portrait project: the Sri Lankans who built things, photographed and exhibited, then sold as a book

A first step

Photograph five Sri Lankans in your town who built something, a business, a school, a bridge, with a 200-word story each, and show the prints in a cafe or a community hall for a week. Ask visitors to name the next five, and ask a local publisher or business to sponsor the book. Nominations and a sponsor's commitment are your proof.

Who pays first

A company or a Sri Lankan association abroad that wants its name on a book of Sri Lankans who built things, and will pay to sponsor it.

What leaves today

The country's story is told by other people; a portrait project documents its own builders and sells that record as a book.

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