The Reggio Emilia Institute in Sweden is driven by a strong pedagogical idea inspired by the municipal preschools in Reggio Emilia, Italy.
Since it was established in 1993, the institute has been a meeting place for everyone in Sweden who wants to examine and work for the rights and opportunities of children and young people.
The Reggio Emilia Institute attempts to connect various competencies and activities based on the concept of cooperative learning through collective experimentation.
A form of learning that is always in motion, based on investigation and participation in dialogue, at the local and national level, but also internationally.
REGGIO EMILIA INSTITUTE
– AN INSTITUTE FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF PRACTICE
The Reggio Emilia Institute consists of an economic association and a limited company that carries out comprehensive commercial activities, enabling the institute to be both a large and important meeting place and a developer of practice, primarily for Swedish preschool institutions, but more recently also for Swedish primary schools. The institute's wide-ranging educational activities, with a catalog of open programs as well as a large number of specially commissioned courses, have enabled the association to invest money and resources in various projects to develop practice. At the same time, of course, all the lectures, courses, guidance, and educational programs in our business activity have led to the development of practice across Sweden, through the inspiration and knowledge that these have transmitted in the hundred languages of children, in pedagogical documentation, in cooperative learning, in reflecting and investigating, and in the use of projects.
It all started at Moderna Museet, the major museum of modern art in Stockholm.
THE HISTORY OF THE REGGIO EMILIA INSTITUTE
Sweden is the country that has had the most and the longest exchange with preschools in Reggio Emilia. The Reggio Emilia Institute was established in 1993, after two large exhibitions from Reggio Emilia, A Child Has One Hundred Languages and More About the One Hundred Languages, which were shown at Moderna Museet in Stockholm in the 1980s and aroused considerable and widespread interest among educators, politicians, researchers, and others in Sweden and even the rest of Scandinavia.
The purpose of establishing an institute was to stimulate discussion about pedagogical issues by trying to deepen knowledge about the pedagogical philosophy at the municipal preschools in Reggio Emilia and inspire Swedish educationalists to such work in our Swedish preschool tradition, which in many ways carries with it a similar respect for children to that in Reggio Emilia.
At the instigation of the Reggio Emilia Institute, a Sweden Network was created so that many people could meet and discuss, and this subsequently grew into many local and regional networks.
The Reggio Emilia Institute's cooperation with educators in the world of primary schools is now developing and deepening. In Sweden, there have been a number of primary schools inspired by Reggio Emilia's pedagogical philosophy for several years.
The institute's activities have expanded considerably over the years, resulting in it becoming both an economic association and a limited company.
• The Reggio Emilia Institute wants to inspire and develop Swedish preschools and schools – and demonstrate all the rights and resources of children.
• The Reggio Emilia Institute coordinates and cooperates with many networks: Swedish, Scandinavian, and international, such as Reggio Children and La Fondazione Reggio Children Loris Malaguzzi in Italy, NAREA in North America, and Red Solare in South America, among many others. The Reggio Emilia Institute also hosts many study visits from other countries and has been involved in building a school, which it still supports, in a poor village in Nepal.
• The Reggio Emilia Institute is an institute for developing practice which runs a number of development projects.
• The Reggio Emilia Institute offers lectures, seminars, courses, and conferences in many places in Sweden as well as in Reggio Emilia, Italy.
• The Reggio Emilia Institute offers several year-long courses to become an atelierista or a pedagogista, and an advanced course for educators.
• The Reggio Emilia Institute produces new materials, reports, writings, and also publishes books, as well as selling books from other publishers that are relevant to the institute's activities, and books and materials from Reggio Children.
• The Reggio Emilia Institute publishes its own magazine, Modern Barndom, with four issues per year.
• The Reggio Emilia Institute has a website where visitors can read about the institute and its activities, book lectures and courses, apply for educational programs, order books and other publications, read articles and reports (especially on the pages from Modern Barndom), gain access to pedagogical documentation and research, etc.
• The Reggio Emilia Institute offers tailor-made training courses for entire municipalities, preschools, and schools, as well as process leadership, across Sweden, but also in the rest of Scandinavia, more particularly in Norway.
• The Reggio Emilia Institute has wide-ranging international contacts, including Reggio Emilia in Italy. The institute's international coordinators also participate in conferences and other exchanges in many parts of the world.
Modern Childhood
The Reggio Emilia Institute publishes its own magazine, Modern Barndom (Modern Childhood), with four issues per year.
Here is an article that was written in English and then translated into Swedish for Modern Barndom, number 1, 2024. We also published it in the English (original language) version below:
Network 29: Art, Education, and Democracy. An article in Modern Barndom (the magazine of the Reggio Emilia Institute), edition 1, 2024
Bordercrossing is an exhibition from Reggio Emilia in Italy, which is now touring in Sweden under the auspices of the Reggio Emilia Institute.
In every municipality where it is shown, the institute also constructs an atelier as part of the exhibition, which remains after the exhibition has moved on. In the atelier, visitors can themselves test ways of encountering nature with various types of analog and digital expressions, just as there have been many examples of from the preschools in Reggio Emilia in the exhibition.
Here you will find an article translated into English from Modern Barndom (Modern Childhood, the magazine of the Swedish Reggio Emilia Institute) about Bordercrossing in Haninge municipality, south of Stockholm:
FROM VIEW CHANGE TO BORDER CROSSING IN HANINGE
Building where we put our feet down
“With Bordercrossing, we wanted to take an extra step. But also to celebrate everything that we had done since our ‘view-change’” says Maria Pelle-Bäck, central atelierista in Haninge municipality.
Since its establishment, the Reggio Emilia Institute has carried out large projects to develop practice, which means that the institute primarily sees itself as an institute for developing practice.
The very first project, Pedagogy in a changing world, started in 1993 in close cooperation with the Teacher Training College in Stockholm and the Skarpnäck urban district in Stockholm.
Since then, the institute has run many projects lasting several years, such as:
• The magical language, which led to a large research project about children and language at Stockholm University.
• The pre-school of tomorrow, which brought together educators, architects, designers, politicians, pre-school directors, and others, to especially concentrate on the importance of environment and the question of how we can build the pre-schools of tomorrow.
• Interculturality project, which is the first project where the institute cooperates with some preschools in Reggio Emilia and in two places in Sweden, around how one can work interculturally in preschools.
• School project, about how the schools’ work can encourage the construction of sentences.
• Light project, which brought together several preschools in an investigation of the scientific phenomenon and concept of "light."
• In-depth project in preschool, which worked with deepening preschool practice from the starting point of the new revised national Swedish curriculum for preschools together with the one hundred languages.
• Sustainable future, a newly-started project about sustainability issues in preschools and schools.
A film about two Swedish elementary schools inspired by the educational philosophy of the city of Reggio Emilia in northern Italy. With English subtitles.
