The Kuching Finale

Kuching matters to this work for institutional and cultural reasons in equal measure. UNESCO's recognition of the city as a Creative City of Gastronomy gave it standing in the world's food heritage, and Serumpun was framed against that from the start. Bringing the last chapter to Kuching completed the institutional case Serumpun was built on.

The venue mattered too. Sarawak Cultural Village, at Pantai Damai in Santubong, has been Sarawak's living heritage ground since 1990. It has full-scale longhouses of the Iban, Bidayuh, Orang Ulu, Melanau and Malay communities, cultural performances every day, and heritage practice that never stops. Closing the founding year at the Village was a way of saying that the work belongs to the communities the Village honours. The people who took their cuisine abroad do not own it.

So did the date. 2 April 2026 was nine months on from the July 2025 launch. That gave the international and rainforest chapters time to happen and be reported, and it kept the founding cycle to a single year. We planned it as one complete piece of work, and that is how we delivered it.

The Kuching Finale was 100% Sarawak, and you could see it in whose hands the evening was in as much as on the menu. The In Motion mentees themselves were the main curators and innovators of the night. I guided, and they carried it out in full. At the table, everyone could see the baton pass, and the mentees step up as the true custodians of Serumpun Sarawak.

Sarawak Cultural Village was the right place for that. SCV is the first institution to put Serumpun Sarawak's thinking into daily practice, a heritage ground where the work can continue without depending on whoever started it. It is also the country's first and most important living museum, with its architecture, its longhouses, its daily performances and its heritage practice. To end the founding cycle there was to hand the work to a place that has been looking after cultural continuity since 1990.

If a conservation movement cannot outlive its founder, it has failed. The Kuching Finale was the first time we could show that this one can.

Taken together, the four chapters show something no single one could show alone.

The Launch: the movement unveiled, fully formed, with state backing and in step with UNESCO.

Expo 2025 Osaka: the international debut, showing the cuisine could stand its ground in one of the most demanding food markets in the world.

Mulu: the homecoming, with the cuisine back in the rainforest it came from.

The Kuching Finale: the close, ending the founding year in Sarawak's capital, in the hands of its mentees.

In order, they trace a movement that began with state support, went out to the world, went back to the land and then came home. That is the shape of the founding year, and the Finale is where the shape was finished.

In August 2025, Serumpun Sarawak made its international debut at Seaside Studio CASO in Osaka, during Sarawak Week at World Expo Osaka. In March 2026, UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy Kuching formally endorsed the movement for its contribution to conserving Sarawak's indigenous gastronomy, food culture, and edible medicinal flora and seeds. Continuity rests on four stages, build, train, transfer and assure continuity, carried out through the mentorship programme, the adoption at Sarawak Cultural Village, the national tour with the Sarawak Tourism Board, media training for the mentees, and Serumpun In Motion. This is a commitment for a generation, well beyond a single event.

Serumpun Sarawak now lives inside the oldest living institution of Sarawakian culture. It will not fade, and it will not be shut away in an archive. It will be cooked, tasted, shared and passed on every day by the people it was always meant to serve.

The Kuching Finale closed the founding year, and the movement goes on. After April 2026, Serumpun enters its second year. The In Motion mentee programme continues, and so do the partnerships with the institutions and with UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy Kuching. The cultural-diplomacy standard we set in the founding year is still the one we work to.

Over the founding year I learned that the cuisine could travel and could come home. The years ahead will test what that year proved.