Whether you are an established novelist, write poems in your spare time or are only just beginning your creative journey, Europeana has put together a programme to support your practice and inspire you. Explore what’s planned and register below!
The Europeana Writers’ Room
On the first Wednesday of every month we run the Europeana Writers’ Room. In this hour, we use illustrations and imagery from the collections available on Europeana.eu to prompt reflection and writing on a different theme. Each session starts with gentle warm-up exercises and then longer prompts to help you to start your stories and ideas.
You can also access all the prompts and exercises, and share your writing on the Europeana Writers' Room section of the Europeana Academy (log-in required). So if you missed a workshop, want to look again, or work through the prompts at your own pace, then head to the Europeana Academy.
Structured training through Europeana Academy
Europeana Academy is our training programme for professionals working with, in and around cultural heritage. Through the Academy, we offer live, online training courses on digital storytelling and writing, alongside self-paced courses on our digital training platform.
The live training runs four times a year, with the next sessions coming up shortly!
‘How to tell great stories and write for Europeana.eu’ explores what storytelling is all about, introduces Europeana's audiences and editorial formats, and helps you create your own culture-inspired galleries and stories. This course has been expanded and updated for September 2026, so to complete it all, you will need to attend both Part 1 and Part 2.
- Part 1 (Modules 1 and 2) - Tuesday 8 September 2026 10:00-13:00 CET
- Part 2 (Modules 3 and 4) - Tuesday 15 September 2026 10:00-13:00 CET
If you want to follow our courses at your own pace, you can sign up to take them on the Europeana Training Platform.
A quiet writing hour with art and culture
Complementing our active Writers' Room workshops, every other week we run ‘a quiet writing hour with art and culture’. This offers a silent, online and focused space to create and write in companionship with others doing the same. Art and cultural heritage items will be shared on the screen during the workshop, but there are no spoken prompts or interaction.
This event is organised as part of the Shut Up & Write! initiative, a global community that empowers writers to overcome procrastination, silence their inner critic and make consistent progress on their projects. It takes place on alternate Fridays - see upcoming sessions on our events page.
More resources to explore
Europeana Creative Climate Action Award
The results of the first Europeana Creative Climate Action Award are collected in a new exhibition. We asked for up to 500 words of creative writing, fiction or poetry inspired by one or more of the images in our Europeana Creative Climate Action Award gallery, curated by the Europeana Climate Action Community.
Enjoy nine stories and poems, see the images that inspired them and hear the authors read their work!
Europeana story dice
Use Europeana story dice to develop your storytelling and creative idea generation.
Europeana’s story dice use cultural heritage images to provide creative prompts. Pick an image you like, or roll a dice at random, and then write, draw or discuss. Use more images to develop your story or discussion!
There are many ways to use story dice - they are great for creative sessions with young people but equally at home used as an ice breaker with a group of professionals.
Find out how to download and use them or even how to create your own.
7 digital storytelling tips
Audiences want to feel informed by digital stories, but also curious, immersed, inspired and connected by them. It is this that sets storytelling apart from other content types; and it is this that gives storytelling such a role to play in engagement and community-building across the cultural heritage sector.
Our seven tips are a valuable resource for cultural heritage professionals and institutions looking to develop their capacity for successfully sharing their stories online.
Discover the tips - with translations, a video and infographics!
Meet our expert
All of these events are run by Europeana’s Editorial Advisor, Dr Beth Daley. Beth is a novelist, cultural and creative writer and works on engaging a broad range of audiences in Europeana’s work and content. She has a PhD in Creative Writing, runs a range of writing workshops and her first novel, ‘Blood and Water' is published by Hic Dragones in Manchester.
Beth says, ‘Writing is a really valuable skill that’s useful in all sorts of professional scenarios but it’s much more than that - I strongly believe it’s a brilliant tool we can all develop to explore our ideas and learn how to express ourselves, which benefits our wellbeing and our sense of who we are as individuals.‘
Get more support and inspiration
You can see an overview of all of our writing and storytelling events (and more!) on our events page, or sign up to our events and training newsletter to get them straight to your inbox.
Finally, our Europeana Communicators Community runs activities around digital storytelling and is a community for Europe’s creatives and communications professionals. Sign up today!
Post updated 30 June 2026