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The Online Creative Residency run by Europeana - Europe’s digital platform for cultural heritage - brings students and emerging professionals who want to gain storytelling skills together with expert mentors in a range of formats, including creative writing. The theme uniting their work for 2026 was science. From inventions and inventors, through to discoveries both big and small, and things that make our lives better - or worse - science is the language that explains our world. This year, the residency looked at how science shapes us, and used cultural heritage to question, interrogate, or muse upon how science sees and configures everything around us - our bodies, food, nature, time, and society. What can we learn from the past? What will we see in our future? What can looking at science in a creative way teach us about the nature of humankind? Jana Gelder, Sofia Di Vito and Chiara Gottardo responded to science-themed artworks on Europeana to create new stories, and we’re delighted and grateful for their writing to be published on The Ekphrastic Review. Beth Daley, Europeana Foundation, Audience Engagement, Editorial Adviser ** About her project, "Of Jasmine Flowers and Woven Screams," Chiara says, "Land, belonging, and the ways we carry stories across generations have always fascinated me. When I saw this year’s residency theme, I challenged myself to explore how these interests could connect with science, while also engaging with European cultural archives. During my time living in Jordan, I became deeply interested in Palestinian history and Tatreez, the traditional embroidery that preserves memory, identity, and resistance. In this story, I use embroidery as a bridge between science and cultural heritage: a form of 'DNA on cotton' that transmits information across generations, cultures, and time."
Of Jasmine Flowers and Woven Screams “Don’t worry, it’s in your DNA.” You used to tell me all the time. I wish it was true. If it was, I should be able to repair this little hole I discovered in my shirt this morning. Lately, I have found myself thinking about you a lot. Last week my friend and I went to Al-Salt, a small city near Amman, and visited a history museum. I walked past a black dress, beautifully embroidered. I imagined how much you would have loved it. The guide told us that it was a traditional Palestinian embroidery, called Tatreez. “They used to embroider flowers, plants, and animals that were part of the Palestinian natural landscape” he explained in Arabic, while my friend was translating. “In this way, just by looking at the dress, it was possible to trace the marital and economic status of the seamstress, as well as her regional background.” He then pointed at some patterns in the dress in front of us: “See those? Orange blossoms. They tell us the embroiderer was from Beit Dajan, near Jaffa.” He went on to tell us how the village flourished in the 19th century because of its orange groves. After 1948, it was renamed Beit Dagon by Israeli settlers, and its inhabitants were prevented from returning. They ended up in refugee camps, and dresses with complex and intricate embroidery such as the one in front of us have not been made since then. Even though the guide was speaking Arabic, I could perceive the bitterness in his voice. I didn't understand his words, but grief rarely needs translation. Those stitches were telling a different story from your embroideries, but they shared the same grammar. Maybe that’s why I stayed there for a while. I thought about all the beautiful dresses you used to sew. Palestinians embroidered their roots, the love for their land, their memory. Every stitch carried a story: it was like their DNA on cotton, transmitting information across generations. But you, nonna, what were you trying to say? What was your story? At the museum, looking more closely at the orange blossom embroidery on the dress, I thought I could smell its perfume. It transported me back to your bedroom. Everything there smelled of flowers, as did you. I remembered how, when I asked you why, you took off your bra and jasmine flowers fell on the floor. “It’s an old trick to always smell good,” you told me. When you were diagnosed with a breast tumour and got a mastectomy, I never dared to ask you to show me again. But for a long time, I wondered if you kept hiding petals there regardless. Apparently, together with my supposed ability to hold a needle, I also inherited from you a great passion for storytelling (as well as your ugly feet, if you allow me to say so; I would indeed have preferred your blue eyes). When I was a child I imagined each story as a red string connecting us all in a tightly woven net. I believed that if I could weave those tales, I would see the threads of our family, like spirals of DNA. I asked you why you had never become a seamstress. You answered me the way you always did by telling me a story. “I was living in Rome then, your grandfather had been deployed there and my daughter, your mother, was only four. Every afternoon I would take her to Piazza di Spagna just to look at the shop windows. It was there that I saw for the first time the shop of the Sorelle Fontana. I still remember walking into the shop: the noise from the square disappeared, just as if I had stepped into a church. The lady there asked me if I was looking for something and I couldn’t even answer because I was so in awe. She complimented my dress and your mother's. Did you make them yourself? she asked. I answered her yes and she told me they were looking for a new seamstress in the atelier. If I wanted to come the next day, they would offer me the job.” “And? Did they?” “I never went,” you answered me softly. I wanted to ask you why, but I felt the question withering like a flower in my throat. “It’s in your DNA,” you always used to say. Then it’s probably better you can’t see me now, lying on my bed, hiding from the ferocious sun of Amman, trying, without success, to thread a needle. You would have done it so quickly. Even when you got older, and your hands would tremble too much to sew, if I held them still you could do it in only a few seconds. And the proud look on your face afterwards! It only lasted a short while, before you would turn sad again, take the first rosary you could reach and start praying and praying. Sometimes I thought you were praying to be able to sew when you got into Paradise. You would make a hell of a suit for God, I am sure. “Nonna, tell me again the story of the nightgown,” I used to ask you. You would start in the same way, each time. “I was only fifteen and the war was still going. But not for long. One day, the allies came and they landed right near our home, falling from the sky. I kept my brothers inside; we were alone while my parents were at work. They were so excited: the war to us didn’t mean much action, just little food and thin faces. The soldiers went on their way, leaving the parachutes behind in the fields. As the bigger sister, I had to take care of my brothers and help around the house, so I learned how to sew when I was little. With six brothers there was always a need for repairing socks. But I wanted to do more than that. When I saw their parachutes I had an idea. That night, while everyone was sleeping, I went outside. It was pitch dark. I was so scared, I could hear my heart throbbing. I took the parachute fabric and brought it home.” That was the moment of the story when you would stand up, go to your wardrobe, and take out your nightgown. It was the most beautiful thing I had seen in my twelve years of life: it seemed to be made from a cloud, white and soft. It had puffy sleeves, a little collar, and most importantly, at least in my eyes, many ribbons. You would let me touch it, and once you even let me try it on. It was so big! I couldn’t wait to grow up to fit in it. I asked if you would leave it to me after you were gone. You didn’t answer. You took your box with all the yarns and thimbles and went back to trying to teach me how to sew myself. I can’t recall when you stopped trying. I wish you hadn’t. This little hole in my shirt seems so much bigger now. You would have smiled and scolded me a little and in a few minutes given my shirt back, perfectly repaired, without expecting thanks. I gave up trying to repair my shirt and threw it onto the floor. Tomorrow I'll take it to the tailor in Jabal Webdeh. He is Palestinian, like many people in Amman. Maybe I'll ask him more about tatreez. As I thought back to the museum visit last week, the black embroidered dress came vividly to mind. The guide's words echoed in my head once again. “During the Intifada in the late '80s and early '90s, wearing these dresses became a form of resistance: to defy Israel’s ban on the public display of the Palestinian flag, women stitched maps or symbols of Palestine or simply used the colours of the flag. Tatreez was a daily reminder of where they come from, of their heritage, of their struggles and resistance. It was...” my friend struggled to find the right translation, “a woven scream against the constant pressure to silence their voices and collective memory.” A woven scream. I imagined thousands of voices stitched into the cotton, refusing to be silenced. The sorrow behind it. I never thought of your nightgown as a scream. More as a delicate song or little poem. But all those ribbons might have tricked me, maybe they were a disguise. What were you trying to scream, what were you resisting? Was it because grandfather would never allow you to work as a seamstress as it was not respectable for a wife of a lieutenant? Was it a scream against death and the fear of being forgotten? If so, I wish I could answer you now and reassure you. How I see you every time I take a needle in my hand, or I have a hole in a sleeve, or I smell jasmine. You are in the air, and in every hole, even in this little one in my shirt right now, filling the spaces of my memory. Some families pass down blue eyes. Others pass down a love for stories (and an ugly pair of feet). I consider myself lucky. Chiara Gottardo Chiara Gottardo has loved writing for as long as she can remember, but for a while life got in the way: law school, work in international relations, and, more generally, trying to survive and thrive in a messed-up world. Living in Jordan for a year brought her back to writing as a way of reconnecting with her roots. This year, she finally decided to put this love of hers out into the world. She writes stories about memory, childhood, family, generations, and belonging. Her work has appeared in Italian online magazines. This is her first time writing in English and hopefully not the last.
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