Starter Kit. Idea 395 of 500. Cluster 19
A national portrait project: the Sri Lankans who built things, photographed and exhibited, then sold as a book
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
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.
Ask first
- Data Protection Authority. Ask what consent is needed to publish people's portraits and stories.
- Department of Cultural Affairs. Ask whether support exists for an exhibition of portraits.
Check before you spend
Each person's written consent to the photograph, the story and its sale in a book, and the venue's agreement for the exhibition.
Find out these three numbers
- How many visitors nominate the next five people?
- What will a sponsor pay toward the book?
- What does a small print run cost?
A comparison from the book
What we have already built. Chapter Three
"It is that the list exists, that it runs from lunar samples to lingerie"
A list of what Sri Lankans built changes minds, and photographs make it hard to forget.
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.