The Educational Project of Reggio Emilia
The Municipal early childhood programs in Reggio Emilia, Northern Italy, for children aged three months to six years, are internationally acclaimed for the inspirations, challenges, and provocations they provide for all those concerned with the care and education of young children. Observation, documentation, and collaborative interpretation of children’s discussions and actions, provide the constant possibility of developing new theories and constructs based on practice.
Watch this video for an insight into Reggio Emilia, and once you are in Vimeo you can click on Reggio Children logo to see more videos on different topics.
Reggio Children
Reggio Children was founded in 1994 to promote and defend children’s rights, and to organise the pedagogical and cultural exchanges already taking place between Reggio Emilia’s municipal early childhood centres and teachers, academics and researchers from around the world.
*click on the image to go to the Reggio Children website…
On local, national and international levels, Reggio Children:
promotes research projects together with universities, foundations, ministries and companies working in various fields;
provides professional learning programs on a variety of themes and topics, including e-learning available worldwide online;
carries out educational consulting activities;
collaborates with NGO’s in co-operation initiatives with institutions for early childhood in various countries;
publishes literature translated into 14 languages;
manages the The Hundred Languages of Children Exhibition that has been travelling for 25 years across five continents invited by governments, museums, universities and art galleries.
The Istituzione
Since October 2003 early childhood services in the Municipality of Reggio Emilia have been run through a specific body called the Istituzione. This body has autonomy on educational, pedagogical and administrative issues, its own budget and its own Mayor-nominated staff. Objectives of the Istituzione include organising, managing and increasing activities necessary for the functioning and qualification of Infant-toddler Centres and Preschools in the Municipality of Reggio Emilia. The Istituzione is intended not simply as an organ of effective management but exists to safeguard and renew qualities and values in Reggio Emilia educational services.
*click on the image to go to the Instituzione website…
Municipal Infant-toddler Centres and Preschools of Reggio Emilia
The Reggio Emilia Municipal Infant-toddler Centres and Preschools have always been defined by the modernity of their theoretical thinking and their deep-rooted commitment to research and experimentation.
These services for early childhood transform into everyday reality an educational project for children from 0 – 6 years based on the image of a child equipped with enormous potential who is the subject of rights. For this reason, privileged attention is given to the children, observation, and documentation of learning processes, and exchanging ideas and discussion.
Other distinctive traits include collegial and relation-based organisation of work, the importance accredited to environments and spaces, including atelier spaces and atelierista educators for valuing children’s creativity, intense co-participation in school management by families, relationships with culture in the city and the most lively research experiences in Italy and abroad.
Reggio Children Foundation - Loris Malaguzzi Centre
In 2011, the Reggio Children Foundation - Loris Malaguzzi Centre was founded with the aim to promote quality education and research in Reggio Emilia and around the world. The Foundation is developing different projects in collaboration with the Istituzione Infant-toddler Centres and Preschools and Reggio Children, on different aspects of the Reggio Emilia approach. Of particular interest is the project developed with AMREF – Africa (NGO organisation that is working in Africa on the aspect of health situations in disadvantaged settings).
*click on the image to go to the Reggio Children Foundation website…
Loris Malaguzzi Centre
In 1998 the Municipality of Reggio Emilia purchased the ‘Locatelli’ cheese warehouses so they could become both home to the Loris Malaguzzi International Centre and at the same time a symbol of urban renewal in this northern area of the city where the first industrial area was located
The Loris Malaguzzi International Centre was opened in February 2006. It was created to give greater value to a strong and distinctive characteristic of Reggio Emilia; the ability to lend listening, visibility and support to the rights and requests of children, young people, families and teachers. The Centre is a dedicated meeting place where professional development and research intersect for people in Reggio Emilia, Italy and the world who wish to innovate education and culture.
The Loris Malaguzzi International Centre it is an open place so that its potential can be appreciated; open to all ages, to ideas, different cultures, to hope and imagination. A place of the possible, both necessary and useful for the concept of a city ascribing value to change. The second phase of renovation work began in 2007, and now completed, includes a preschool, the first two years of elementary school, a bookshop and a reception area with restaurant and hospitality facilities.
A place of places taking inspiration from the Reggio educational experience but looking to the future and giving definition to the international and multicultural dimensions existing since its inception. Centre – as Loris Malaguzzi defined it in his talk at the Kohl Foundation – port, place for exchange, for ships to anchor in the evening and take provisions. But above all a place where they come to tell stories and listen, for through narrating and listening we change and we grow.
The Centre therefore is a place of listening just as our schools are first and foremost places of listening. That is why the Centre takes the relativity of points of view, of dialogue and therefore of research as its primary value.
Carla Rinaldi – President of the Reggio Children Foundation
International Network
The International Network is made up of representatives in countries Reggio Children has interacted with in stable ways for several years. The Network contributes to the dissemination of the Reggio Emilia Approach®, supporting international dialogue, and the work of Reggio Children and the Loris Malaguzzi International Centre.
REANZ is a member of the International Network.