Dreamboat, a floating science centre on the lagoon

Dreamboat is a solar-powered floating makerspace and community science centre on the Batticaloa lagoon, at the Ocean Lab: sensors, drones and instruments translating live environmental data into public visualisations, built and owned by the community rather than installed for it.

Andrew Quitmeyer’s project won a Tomorrowland Projects Foundation Award in 2022, of US$3,500, administered through the New York Foundation for the Arts.

The community-ownership part is the point. A monitoring station installed by an outside body and read by an outside body tells the lagoon’s communities nothing they can act on.