The Kishkinda Trust (TKT) was established in 1997 with the belief that conservation and business incubation can help in socio-economic development of a community. The Kishkinda Trust is based in Anegundi village within Hampi, a World Heritage site, and involves creating a model village for cultural industries with a replicable plan across the country. The restoration and holistic development of its traditional homes and promotion of cultural industry incubators within these spaces will enable the local community to manage their art, craft, hospitality for heritage tourism and culinary enterprises. TKT focuses intensively on capacity building of local villagers across multidisciplinary fields of creative and cultural industries—architectural conservation, heritage restoration, crafts and design, management and hospitality, so that their lives are nurtured, enriched and empowered by their own culture and identities. This process reaffirms ties between tradition, everyday commerce and the quality of life.

This paper deals with traditional boat building in our country Traditional boat building refers to boats and other watercraft mostly using wood and other locally-available raw materials in our archipelago. The fabrication and construction methods as well as their operation draw largely from long term indigenous experience in traversing the inland seas in Southeast Asia, the South China Sea (West Philippine Sea) and the vaster Pacific and Indian Oceans. Boat building technology is part of the broader Malayo-Polynesian culture. The major components of this broad culture include the use of Austronesian languages, bilateral family structure, mutually-supportive clans and kinship groups that include maternal and patriarchal affines led by the most able chief. Most important feature of Malayo-Polynesian culture is boat building and sea faring that enabled them to disperse by 1,500 BCE from the core area in Southeast China, Taiwan, Malaya, Indonesia and the Philippines as far as the Madagascar to the west, east to Pacific Island Groups across the Pacific up to the offshore islands of Argentina in South America.