Sri Lanka’s most effective craft campaign of the year may not have come from a trade fair, export pavilion or government promotion. In recent weeks, Miss World Sri Lanka Prathibha Liyanarachchi, a technical designer and University of Moratuwa graduate, has taken a distinctly Sri Lankan visual identity onto the international stage.
That exposure is hard to measure, but it shows how powerful heritage can become when made contemporary, visible and relevant. There could be hundreds of young creatives doing similar work if given the right platforms and opportunities.
That makes the Government’s renewed attention to handloom timely.
Speaking recently at The Art of Weaving, the Minister of Industry and Entrepreneurship Development described handloom not as a declining heritage industry, but as an “industry of the future”, calling for product categories beyond the saree and setting an export ambition of US$100 million or more.
The direction is encouraging, but it raises a harder question: after decades of programmes and preservation, what actually needs to change?
For Selyna Peiris and Robert Meeder, co-founders of The Institute for Future Creations (TIFC), the answer lies in Sri Lanka’s creative economy. The phrase has circulated long enough to risk becoming development vocabulary: broad enough for everyone to support, but vague enough for nobody to own. Five years after Sri Lanka helped sponsor a UN resolution on the creative economy, the challenge is defining what it means economically.
“Craft gives us something very tangible around which to start building that economy,” says Peiris.
“We have makers, materials, knowledge and businesses already producing. The opportunity is to stop seeing them simply as beneficiaries of preservation programmes and start seeing them as part of a contemporary productive economy.”
Handloom, batik, jewellery, ceramics, wood, fibre and other material traditions can create jobs, intellectual property, innovation and exports, but not if development is treated simply as producing more. As Meeder argues, “The answer isn’t necessarily more handloom stations or more looms. It is about connecting the capabilities we already have to markets and partners prepared to pay a better price for a better product.”
That thinking shaped earlier work behind Creative Sri Lanka 2030, developed with EDB and later supported through an EU-led matchmaking programme.
L-R, at the Sri Lankan High Commission presentation on the Future of Sri Lankan Craft_ Sonali Dharmawardena, Batik Designer_ Somasena Mahadiulwewa, Acting Director General of Commerce_ Hannah Middleton, University
L-R, at the Sri Lankan High Commission presentation on the Future of Sri Lankan Craft_ Sonali Dharmawardena, Batik Designer_ Somasena Mahadiulwewa, Acting Director General of Commerce_ Hannah Middleton, University
Instead of stopping at training, six Sri Lankan brands were mentored, matched with international designers and secured export orders from Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and the UK. EDB is now scaling the approach through an umbrella model that links established exporters with 40 to 50 SMEs, artisans, and designers.
The Chamber of Ethical Lifestyle Enterprises (CELE) grew from the relationships created through that programme, bringing together businesses that realised many challenges could not be solved alone.
It reflects a new kind of industry chamber for enterprises navigating international markets, sustainability demands, technology and collaboration.
A small business cannot run production, track regulation, attend fairs, find designers and buyers, and maintain overseas networks at once. A functioning creative economy needs shared infrastructure, and organisations such as CELE can bridge entrepreneurs, government, knowledge partners and markets.
That infrastructure matters as international markets change. Europe’s emerging Digital Product Passport framework will require more product information and traceability.
For large exporters, this means investment; for resource-constrained MSMEs, the implications are more serious.
If compliance becomes costlier while craft remains concentrated in low-value, souvenir-like products, smaller producers risk being pushed further from export markets. The answer is not only compliance, but moving products up the value chain.
“Small does not have to mean low value,” says Peiris. “A craft business does not necessarily need to become a factory. It needs the design, technology, market intelligence and partnerships that allow what it makes to become more valuable, while ensuring that value reaches the people and communities behind it.”
This also demands a rethink of creative education. Sri Lanka does not necessarily need more design graduates leaving university, assuming success means launching another fashion label.
It needs hybrid creative product designers and innovators who can move between a weaving community, a manufacturer, a new material, an informal craft value chain and an international market. These people already exist.
What is missing is an ecosystem that recognises them, supports them and gives them industries worth transforming.
Nor should Europe be the only horizon. India offers a vast neighbouring ecosystem of craft knowledge, materials, designers, technology and increasingly sophisticated consumers.
Greater exchange between Indian and Sri Lankan experts could turn proximity into an advantage, building regional knowledge and commercial relationships rather than looking instinctively west for every market and solution.
There are also more radical possibilities around regenerative materials, agriculture, traceability and the reconnection of land with product.
Sri Lanka once had more interconnected local fibre and handloom systems, including cotton cultivation.
New experiments suggest how those relationships might be reconsidered, not nostalgically, but through design, technology, green investment and higher-value production.
TIFC is exploring interventions with partners around these intersections, asking how materials, makers, designers, technology and markets can be connected from the beginning.
For Meeder, this is why the search for another Sri Lankan “sleeping giant” may be misguided.
“I don’t think there is one giant sector waiting for someone to discover it. We have hundreds of capabilities, materials, businesses, and knowledge systems. We need to identify what works, stop endlessly repeating what doesn’t, and put serious support behind the things that can create real value.”
That may be the best way to interpret the Minister’s US$100 million handloom ambition.
The objective should not simply be more production, designers or projects, but better products, stronger businesses, hybrid creative talent, smarter investment and markets prepared to pay for Sri Lankan knowledge and originality.
Sri Lanka has spent long enough describing its creative economy. Craft gives it an obvious place to start building one, not as heritage protected from change, but as knowledge capable of creating economic value.
The country has proved it can make things exceptionally well.
The next challenge is owning more of the ideas, materials, intellectual property and value behind what it makes. That is when the creative economy stops being a phrase and starts becoming an economy. (Colombo/Sep12/2026)
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