iDiscover Matara

Step One: Arriving in Matara (Properly This Time)

Matara is one of those towns that many of us in the South pass through without slowing down. So when I came for the iDiscover workshop, I gave myself one job before anything else: slow down.

I was there to illustrate the new Matara heritage map and to mentor young students in illustration and concept development. What I didn’t expect was how much the town, and the students, would teach me in return.

Step Two: Walking Before Drawing

The workshop began with exploration: walking through the streets and observing the people, the patterns, and the stories hidden in plain sight. We encouraged the students to look past the obvious, to look up at a façade they’d walked past their whole lives, and to notice the layers of history built into their own hometown.

It’s a strange and lovely thing to watch someone discover their own street for the first time.

And I wasn’t doing this alone.The team of fellow mentors: Atheeq (Photography), Nadee (Creative Writing), Ester (Cultural Mapping), and Prathini (Research). Between us, we helped the students turn what they saw into their own perspectives.

Step Three: Illustrating the Heritage Map

The map focuses on the architecturally significant places in and around Matara Fort. My aim was to make it accurate without feeling academic and detailed without becoming crowded. It needed to feel inviting, more like a friend’s sketchbook than a museum plaque.

Every building had to be recognisable and easy to find, while still sitting comfortably within one cohesive, hand-drawn world.

Step Four: Adding the Sound

This is the part I love most: the map is augmented, and some locations come with their own sounds.

History isn’t only about what we see. It’s also about what we hear and feel. The noise of a busy street, the atmosphere of an old building, the background hum of a town carrying on with its day. With the sound layer, the map stops being a picture of Matara and becomes a way to experience it.

From a design point of view, this added another layer. Each illustrated location now had to work on paper, on screen, and as a gateway to audio. That’s a lot to ask of one small drawing.

Step Five: The Exhibition

Once the map was finished, we put together an exhibition where the students proudly showed what they had made. Seeing their ideas, effort, and creativity on the walls was easily the best part of the whole experience.

The final iDiscover Matara map and app became something special: a shared effort to capture heritage through art, sound, and storytelling, made by people who care about the place.

Matara, you were amazing. Until the next adventure. 💛