Reggio Children was founded in Reggio Emilia as a publicly-owned company in 1994 to promote and defend childrens 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.
This new experience was based on an idea originally proposed by Loris Malaguzzi, the founder of the educational approach, and was continued by a committee of local citizens and educators. Reggio Children's aims and purposes are inspired by the philosophy and values of the educational project developed and practiced in the Municipal Infant-toddler Centers and Preschools of Reggio Emilia, in order to protect and communicate the wealth of knowledge developed within this experience.
Reggio Children continues to have a world wide influence on early childhood education through:
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Promoting research projects together with universities, foundations and ministries and companies working in various fields
- Carrying out educational consulting activities
- Collaborating with projects and initiatives with institutions for early childhood in various countries
- Publishing literature translated into 14 languages
- Running The Hundred Languages of Childrenexhibition that has been travelling for 25 years across five continents invited by governments, museums, universities and art galleries etc, and since 2009 the new Wonder of Learning exhibition
Since 2006 Reggio Children has also managed and coordinated activities and projects at the Loris Malguzzi International Centre with a dedicated managerial group in collaboration with Reggio Emilia Comuneís Istituzione of Schools and Infant-toddler Centres and the Friends of Reggio Children Association.
Download the Reggio Children brochure
"Working with the inspiration from Reggio has much to offer Britain at this time of change and challenge....what it can offer is an important element of diversity, and an injection of new thinking which could enrich British pedagogical practice at this critical moment."
Professor Peter Moss
The aims of Reggio Children include:
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To communicate a forceful idea of childhood and of children's rights, potentials, and resources, which are often unrecognized or neglected;
- To promote studies, research, and experimentation in education, with particular emphasis on children's active, constructive, and creative learning processes;
- To advance the professionalism and culture of teachers, promoting a greater awareness of the value of collegial work and of meaningful relationships with the children and their families; to communicate a forceful idea of childhood and of children's rights, potentials, and resources, which are often unrecognized or neglected;
- To promote studies, research, and experimentation in education, with particular emphasis on children's active, constructive, and creative learning processes;
- To highlight the value of research, observation, interpretation, and documentation of children's knowledge-building and thinking processes;
- To organize guided visits to educational programs, cultural initiatives, exhibitions, seminars, conferences, professional development courses on the issues of education and the culture of childhood.
Since 2006 Reggio Children has also managed and coordinated activities and projects at the Loris Malaguzzi International Centre with a dedicated managerial group in collaboration with Reggio Emilia Comune's Istituzione of Schools and Infant-toddler Centres and the Friends of Reggio Children Association.
