The return

The Kuching Finale closed the founding cycle by bringing the work back to the city that first took it up, in the same year that shaped it.

The order of events tells the story on its own. The Launch (July 2025) opened the cycle in Kuching with state backing and in step with UNESCO. Osaka (August 2025) took the movement to an international stage. Mulu (October 2025) took the cuisine back to the rainforest it came from. The Kuching Finale finished the cycle by coming home.

Why Kuching, why now

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 put it on the formal record of world cultural heritage, and Serumpun was framed against that from the start. Bringing the last chapter back 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 succession, in plain sight

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.

The four chapters, read together

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 return, closing the cycle in the city that first took the movement up.

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.

What comes next

After the Finale, Serumpun begins its second year. The In Motion programme, the mentee strand that has run alongside all four chapters, carries on, and it is the next generation of Sarawak’s cooks who will take the work forward. The cultural diplomacy standard set in the founding year stays in place.

The founding year has ended, and the work goes on.

The press coverage of the Finale is still coming in as of April 2026. We will add more articles here as they appear.