From Borneo to the World

Serumpun Sarawak was unveiled in July 2025. The coverage came at once and in depth across the major Malaysian outlets: Free Malaysia Today, Business Today, The Borneo Post, DayakDaily, Daily Express, The Star, BorneoTalk and India Outbound. What each of them saw, from the first day, was a movement that had been thought through before anyone heard of it.

By the day of the unveiling we already had state backing and alignment with Kuching’s UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy status. We had the plan for three international chapters (Osaka in August, Mulu in October and the Kuching finale the following April), and a clear cultural-diplomacy purpose with Sarawak’s thirty-four indigenous communities at its centre.

The press had no need to piece the story together. It was there for them on the first day.

State backing and UNESCO alignment

The launch took place under the patronage of the Sarawak State Government, with YB Dato Sri Haji Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah, Minister of Tourism, Creative Industry and Performing Arts Sarawak, as our principal counterpart in government. It was aligned from the start with Kuching’s UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy designation. Between them, these put the movement inside Sarawak’s state cultural policy from the first day of coverage.

Free Malaysia Today reported the launch on 10 July 2025 under the headline Sarawak to showcase its unique cuisine at World Expo 2025. On the same day Business Today ran Sarawak’s Culinary Soul Embarks on World Tour for the trade, in a piece by Shahrizal that described the work as “immersive tasting, storytelling and performance”. Between them, the two articles put Serumpun Sarawak into both the national and the international tourism conversation on day one.

Immersive tasting, storytelling and performance. Business Today · 10 July 2025

Three chapters, named at the start

Most state cultural launches in Malaysia unfold as they go. This one arrived with its whole shape visible. On 11 July 2025 DayakDaily ran Serumpun Sarawak: Indigenous food heritage to be spotlighted in Mulu and Osaka. By 12 July, Daily Express had set out the three chapters in full under the headline Serumpun Sarawak Ignites A Cultural Gastronomy Journey from Borneo to the World — Unveiling Global Showcases in Osaka August 2025 and Mulu October 2025.

The chapters, their dates and their cultural purpose were all set on the day of the unveiling. The rest of the year was spent carrying out the plan we had announced.

Locally Sauced: The Star profile

On 13 July 2025 The Star ran Locally Sauced, a feature linking ancestral Bornean food traditions with modern sustainability. It was the most considered profile of the launch, and it treated the work as cultural diplomacy where it could easily have been written up as seasonal launch publicity. The Star set my earlier work (the Krug and Hennessy Ambassade work, and the years at Enfin and Shin’Labo) as the grounding that gave Sarawak the confidence to trust me with this movement.

Locally Sauced brought the work to the attention of the wider Malaysian press.

The Borneo press and the international wire

On 11 July 2025 The Borneo Post ran ‘Serumpun Sarawak’ launched to take indigenous flavours global, Borneo’s own regional record of the launch, which put the indigenous flavours and the cultural diplomacy up front. BorneoTalk’s Serumpun Sarawak: From Borneo to the World carried one of the most quoted lines in the whole archive: “where food becomes a vessel for storytelling”. India Outbound ran Sarawak launches immersive culinary showcase Serumpun Sarawak, which put the movement in front of the international travel trade from the launch onwards.

Watch the chapter

The film of the launch chapter, with the press conference, the unveiling and the people who gathered for it, is on the Serumpun Sarawak channel.

Watch the press conference film → The Launch, July 2025: Stories highlight →

Film and Stories by Atlas Collective.