Statements on the Princess of Wales visit

MARCO MASSARI
Mayor of Reggio Emilia

“The visit by Catherine Middleton, Princess of Wales, is undoubtedly a mark of recognition for our education system and for our city.
This is the Princess’s first overseas visit in several years, and it will be an honour to explain the origins and practice of our educational approach, confirming that investing resources and expertise in education and early childhood continues to attract attention and receive unanimous appreciation.

We cannot help but think of Loris Malaguzzi, the founder and enlightened guide of our educational journey, and of Carla Rinaldi, who promoted this experience worldwide and who passed away a year ago. An experience born of the desire to view childhood as a time rich in rights, dignity and creativity, and which has become an educational approach extending to the whole city and to everyone, without exception.

Considering early childhood education as the foundation of society is a defining feature of our community, the result of political and administrative decisions implemented since the post-war period which, drawing on the distinctive traditions of our city, have created a high-quality public service recognised throughout the world.
I would like to thank all the staff at Preschools and Infant-toddler Centres – Istituzione, Reggio Children srl and Fondazione Reggio Children for their important day-to-day work in promoting and developing the Reggio Emilia Approach.”

MARWA MAHMOUD
Councillor for Education Policy, Reggio Emilia City Council

We are honoured to welcome the Princess of Wales to Reggio Emilia. Through the Royal Foundation, she promotes important and high-quality initiatives dedicated to children and, more broadly, to the wellbeing of girls, boys and their families. Her visit represents a significant recognition of the Reggio Emilia Approach, a living and multifaceted heritage, built up over time thanks to the commitment of a broad and responsible educational community, which works every day to ensure quality, access and rights. I would like to express my sincere thanks to everyone who is part of it: educators, teachers, pedagogistas, staff, institutions and local organisations which, together, make this experience possible.
At the heart of this journey are always the children, together with their families, who are the protagonists of the educational relationship and the daily life of the services. It is from this centrality that, over the years, a continuous dialogue has been built, capable of opening up to the world and making Reggio Emilia an international benchmark in the field of education.
The Princess of Wales’s interest stems precisely from this: from a public educational experience that places rights, listening, participation and the quality of relationships at the centre, and which continues to question its own role in the present.
At a time when the rights of children are being called into question in many parts of the world, this approach takes on even greater significance. Continuing to invest in education today means taking on a collective responsibility, as well as an honour: that of defending and promoting a vision of a fairer future, starting with childhood.
Knowing that this experience is closely observed at an international level and can become a source of inspiration is a reason of pride for our entire city. Reggio Emilia will continue to be a place that speaks of education as a common good and as a daily practice of democracy. Because speaking of education today means continuing to speak of hope

FEDERICO RUOZZI
President of the Preschools and Infant-toddler Centres – Istituzione of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia

Knowing that the Princess of Wales, through the Royal Foundation and Reggio Children Srl, has taken an interest in the Reggio Emilia Approach and our public schools of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, highlights just how far we have come since the post-war period, from the first self-managed preschools in the 1950s to 2026.

This is an important recognition for all our infant-toddler centres and preschools, for the work carried out every day by all our staff. And as President of Preschools and Infant-toddler Centres – Istituzione, I can only thank them first and foremost, along with the families, who continue to play a leading role in this story. Our schools belong to them; they belong to the city, a shared heritage for which we must fight every day. The Princess’s decision to visit us to see our ateliers at first hand, to appreciate the value of the morning assembly – which Malaguzzi called the ‘children’s parliament’ – and to understand the origins of our history, can only make us proud: Reggio Emilia is a small town, yet it plays a leading role in education on an international level, starting with the very youngest children and their right to education from birth; a small city which, thanks to its schools, has been able to attract and welcome delegations of scholars, researchers, teachers and architects from all over the world every day. And now a princess too.

This should make us proud but also doubly responsible; grateful to those who built this history, to those who came before us, to those who keep it alive and vibrant today, and to leave it as a legacy for those who will come after us.

MADDALENA TEDESCHI
President of Reggio Children 

The visit of the Princess of Wales to Reggio Emilia is an extraordinary honour for us and a responsibility we feel keenly. But it is also, and perhaps above all, an opportunity for genuine dialogue. What the Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood has built – restoring the emotional and relational dimension of childhood to the central place it deserves – resonates deeply with what this city has been practising for decades in its schools and what Reggio Children brings to the world through professional development, exhibitions, publications, ateliers, research and a network of relationships with educational institutions on every continent.

Reggio Children’s mission stems from a conviction that is first and foremost political: children are subjects of rights, bearers of thought and of multiple languages. Defending this vision means recognising childhood as the foundational period of human existence.

The Reggio Approach is, at its core, an ecological way of thinking. It places relationships at the heart of every educational experience – not as a method, but as a worldview. Every child exists within a continuous network of connections: with others, with spaces, with things, with living beings. This awareness has led us, in recent years, to focus increasingly on the relationship between childhood and nature: not as a subject to be added to the curriculum, but as an indispensable perspective. Children do not observe nature from the outside: they are part of it. Recognising this means profoundly changing our educational perspective. It is the thread that runs through our book With our Heart Outside: Nature and Adventure in the School Park, which we are presenting here in its English edition. Malaguzzi imagined the International Centre named after him as a gulf: a place of arrival and exchange, not an archive of ready-made answers. It is in this spirit that we welcome those who come here seeking something – not to export a model, but to open a dialogue. Every context must adapt, reinterpret and find its own path. This is what we hope will also emerge from this extraordinary meeting.