Orientation starts at 3 pm
We settle into our jungle villa, home for five nights, and begin with the senses — light, sound, scents and taste, language, and the curve of Sinhala letters.
- Arrival
- Arrival, orientation, and a walk around the jungle villa and garden
- Journal
- Introduction Creative Journal
- Morning
- Optional massage
- Evening
- Dinner
Explore & collect — tropical modernity
A day of research and noticing on the south coast, seeing how architecture, gardens, and textiles quietly shape attention.
- Travel
- Up the coast to Bentota
- Visit
- Lunuganga — Geoffrey Bawa's garden home, made over forty years
- Visit
- Cinnamon Bentota Beach — Bawa's hotel with Ena de Silva's batik ceiling
- Collect
- Viewfinder work: shapes, shadows, textures, and patterns for your batik design
Cyanotype & poolside sketching
Prussian blue botanical prints made with sunlight, leaves, and flowers gathered from the garden.
- Gather
- Wander the garden for fallen petals, leaves, and flat objects
- Print
- Cyanotype session — sun develops, water reveals
- Sketch
- Begin your one-colour batik design by the pool
Create — batik workshop
Where seeing turns into making: the shapes you collected become a pattern on cloth, in jungle green.
- Workshop
- Local batik workshop — wax, dye, repetition, and waiting
- Evening
- Optional sushi and cocktails
Attention through taste
Creativity through the senses — touch, smell, taste and rhythm in a garden kitchen.
- Dawn
- A quiet dug-out canoe journey through the mangroves
- After breakfast
- Three-hour Sri Lankan cookery lesson with local cooks
- Cook
- Spices roasted by hand, coconut grated, colour before flavour
- Close
- Share your work, reflect on the days, and take the journal home