Unexpected Elements is the podcast exploring the science behind the headlines.

It's a real melting pot. Yeah, the surface has lost happening.

Unexpected Elements from the BBC World Service. Find it wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Welcome to the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service,

which gets into the mind and process of some of the world's most creative people.

I'm Antonia Quirk, and in this programme I'm following costume designer,

Ema Neverwell-Downick, who in 2017 established the Irish costume archive project,

collecting and preserving costumes from the most prestigious Irish film and television productions.

When Ema's not working on films, she's working in the archive.

It's all-consuming and entirely voluntary, the definitive passion project.

When I look back at what we have created, that's really when I get very excited about the archive,

especially when I look back at earlier productions, my left foot, in the name of the father, Michael Collins.

I really believe these films speak to us as a nation and about how we project ourselves

as Irish people on an international stage.

Ema is one of Eileen's most established film costume designers.

Her films include Jimmy's Hall, The Wind That Shakes, The Barley, Bridesad Revisited,

and The Banshees of Inner Sharon.

That's actor John C. Riley, on stage at the Irish Film and Television Academy Awards,

handing over best film gone in May 2023.

I watched it with Ema when it was broadcast the next day on the Irish Television Channel RTE2.

And we had a celebratory bowl of pasta at a kitchen table in the village northwest of Dublin.

I first met Ema when she was on a research trip for a movie in the Highlands of Scotland

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