Starter Kit. Idea 48 of 500. Cluster 3
Fresco print reproductions, properly licensed
The mechanism, from the book
The Zermatt water bottle. Sigiriya has not got a stone with its own name on it.
The first step
Find out which office holds the rights to reproduce the frescoes, and write asking the terms of a licence. While you wait for the reply, test demand with prints of a living artist's own fresco-style work, sold at a weekend market for two weekends. The written terms, and prints sold at your chosen price, are the proof.
- Who pays first
- Visitors who want to take the frescoes home properly printed, and museum and hotel shops that need licensed stock.
- What leaves today
- Unlicensed copies earn the heritage nothing; a licensed print pays the site that holds the original image each time it sells.
Ask first
- Central Cultural Fund. Ask how a licence to reproduce the frescoes is obtained and from whom.
- Department of Archaeology. Ask whether photographing the frescoes for prints needs their permission.
Check before you spend
Who holds the right to license the fresco images, what the licence allows, and how the licence fee is shared.
Find out these three numbers
- What will visitors pay for a good fresco print?
- What does printing on good paper cost per print?
- How many prints a month could the site shop sell?
A comparison from the book
Sigiriya. Chapter Five
"designer, no supplier, no quality standard, no story to attach."
Shopkeepers have no designer and no supplier; a licensed print gives them both.
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.