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Spinning a yarn, 'weaving tales' or 'plot threads': all these familiar expressions suggest a long-lasting metaphorical link between storytelling and clothing making.And Ovid's Latin poem Metamorphoses tells of Arachne, turned into a spider by Minerva (the Roman name for Athena) as a punishment for outdoing her in a weaving contest by creating an intricate tapestry that exposes the crimes of the gods.Ancient poetry introduces us to some of these subversive stitchers: in Homer's epic Odyssey, for example, we encounter Penelope, who designs her secret ruse of stitching and unpicking a veil, so as to avoid marriage to a suitor and stay loyal to her absent husband; meanwhile, in ancient Greek thought, the goddess Athena was identified with the clever intellect required to weave anything from ancient Greek.But despite this focus on the relations between storytelling and weaving, these two styles of practice were also strongly divided along gendered lines in the ancient sources.Some of these ancient women weavers - mythical and actual - could be seen as the foremothers of today's makers and 'craftivists' who use textiles to make their voices heard through storytelling and protest.In the Latin word texere, 'to weave' the English words 'text' and 'textile' even have a shared origin.Both archeological and written evidence from the classical antiquity reveals that the production of cloth - as in many societies since - was primarily women's work.Ancient Greek and Roman writers too have seen links between fabric production craftsmanship and poetry composition.

Spinning a yarn, 'weaving tales' or 'plot threads': all these familiar expressions suggest a long-lasting metaphorical link between storytelling and clothing making. In the Latin word texere, 'to weave' the English words 'text' and 'textile' even have a shared origin. Ancient Greek and Roman writers too have seen links between fabric production craftsmanship and poetry composition. But despite this focus on the relations between storytelling and weaving, these two styles of practice were also strongly divided along gendered lines in the ancient sources.
Both archeological and written evidence from the classical antiquity reveals that the production of cloth – as in many societies since – was primarily women's work. Meanwhile, many of the written narratives that survive from the ancient world amplify the voices of male tale tellers; by contrast, it is often much harder to unravel the stories of women from the written texts.
Weaving Women's Stories,' an upcoming series of events for the 2018 Being Human Festival in London this November, is inspired by recent research on the ancient world's women weavers. Some of these ancient women weavers – mythical and actual – could be seen as the foremothers of today's makers and 'craftivists' who use textiles to make their voices heard through storytelling and protest. Ancient poetry introduces us to some of these subversive stitchers: in Homer's epic Odyssey, for example, we encounter Penelope, who designs her secret ruse of stitching and unpicking a veil, so as to avoid marriage to a suitor and stay loyal to her absent husband; meanwhile, in ancient Greek thought, the goddess Athena was identified with the clever intellect required to weave anything from ancient Greek. And Ovid's Latin poem Metamorphoses tells of Arachne, turned into a spider by Minerva (the Roman name for Athena) as a punishment for outdoing her in a weaving contest by creating an intricate tapestry that exposes the crimes of the gods. And this is just a small piece of the results of the ancient Greek woman’s weaving. So the weaving of the ancient Greek woman is so effective in society until now.