Launch of the INSPIRE Project by the Reggio Children Foundation in partnership with the LEGO Foundation

Cristian Fabbi, Director of the Reggio Children Foundation, who led the morning’s proceedings, opened the day by highlighting the key themes: “INSPIRE is a project by the Reggio Children Foundation, supported by a major partner such as the LEGO Foundation, and stems from a previous research project strongly championed by Carla Rinaldi. Among its activities is the Carla Rinaldi Archive, a complex initiative that will take the form of conferences and publications to promote Carla’s cultural legacy. Through this project, we will be working in contexts facing educational and developmental challenges, establishing research communities in Vietnam and Kenya. In these countries, we will work to develop educational policies in collaboration with governments, universities and UNESCO’s Teacher’s Task Force, of which we are a member. This is a great opportunity to continue the path of solidarity through research, as Carla intended.

Joe Savage, Vice-President of the LEGO Foundation, said: “It is hard to imagine, on the fourth International Day of Play, a more fitting place than this, right here in Reggio Emilia, to launch INSPIRE, a five-year partnership to promote educational, social and political research and innovation, inspired by the cultural legacy of Carla Rinaldi. This partnership continues a thirty-year relationship between LEGO and the city of Reggio Emilia, founded on the belief that creativity, research and participation can improve children’s lives. Today we celebrate the cultural legacy of Carla Rinaldi, who meant so much to us at LEGO and who was awarded the LEGO Prize in 2015. We are proud to support the creation of the Carla Rinaldi Archive, ensuring that her insights and teachings remain accessible to future generations.”

Carla Bagnoli, coordinator of the Reggio Childhood Studies PhD programme, conveyed greetings from Annamaria Contini, director of Desu Unimore, and shared her own personal memories of Carla Rinaldi: “Those who remain find themselves preserving what remains of those who have passed away. Carla Rinaldi built meaningful relationships; she possessed social grace and entrepreneurial ingenuity. This was her way of living in the present. For Carla, planning meant imagining new conditions of possibility. Shaping a future in which others could recognise themselves, participate and grow. Conducting research as an act of responsibility.”

Amapola Alama of UNESCO’s International Bureau of Education spoke on the global state of education in 2026, stating that, despite “significant progress on educational rights worldwide, which has resulted in 1.4 billion students in education, exclusion from education has been rising, particularly in low-income countries, for the past seven years, with 273 million students and young people out of school. There is also a learning crisis, with 617 million students failing to reach minimum standards in reading and mathematics”. She also emphasised the importance of maintaining the international targets for 2030 and international cooperation, starting from early childhood.

Harold Göthson, a member of the board of directors of the Reggio Children Foundation, gave a speech on “Carla Rinaldi and democratic citizenship”: “For Carla Rinaldi, education was part of a broader cultural and democratic project,” he said, “based on participation, listening and recognising the potential of every person. Her legacy invites us to create environments in which children, young people and adults can continue to be recognised as capable of thought, imagination, relationship-building and active citizenship throughout their lives. A legacy that continues to guide the Foundation’s work in promoting rights, potential and educational opportunities for everyone, from 0 to 99 years old.”

James Bradburne, ambassador for the Reggio Children Foundation, gave a keynote lecture entitled “Remembering Carlina Rinaldi: a quarter of a century intertwined”, which began with the words: “Carlina was 100 Carlinas. Take five seconds to remember your own Carlina”. The architect and intellectual recalled 25 years of friendship and collaboration with Carla Rinaldi, beginning with his introduction to the ‘100 Languages’ exhibition in Vancouver in 1986 and his first meeting with Carla at LEGO in Billund in 2000, which was followed by many meetings and collaborations, such as the ‘Crossing Boundaries’ conference in 2003. Bradburne emphasised how Carla had been a leading figure in “the voice of Reggio Emilia” and the link between the Reggio Emilia educational approach and the city’s history and development.

The closing remarks were delivered by Marco Massari, Mayor of Reggio Emilia, who also conveyed greetings from Professor Italo Portioli and Simonetta Gola of Emergency. The mayor stated: “INSPIRE is a project that fosters research communities and educational policies between Reggio Emilia, Kenya and Vietnam. And fostering research communities today means having the courage to engage with one another, to exchange knowledge without any sense of superiority, just as shaping policies means taking responsibility for influencing the future destinies of girls, boys, parents and educators. On this occasion, I would also like to dedicate a special thought to Carla Rinaldi, one of the figures who has contributed most to giving continuity and an international dimension to Reggio Emilia’s educational experience. We are living in a time of growing inequality, conflict and social fragility. In this context, investing in early childhood education and lifelong learning opportunities is not merely a pedagogical choice: it is a political choice in the truest sense of the word.”

Barbara Donnici, Project Manager of the INSPIRE project, presented the initiative led by the Reggio Children Foundation, chaired by Francesco Profumo, in partnership with the LEGO Foundation, which comprises two interconnected strands that are in constant dialogue. Global Research and the Carla Rinaldi Archive is the strand dedicated to the pedagogical legacy of Carla Rinaldi and the promotion of her writings and manuscripts, donated to the Reggio Children Foundation in her will, which will be catalogued in the new Carla Rinaldi Archive. This will form the first intellectual and cultural corpus of the educationalist, one of the central figures of the Reggio Emilia Approach. Within this same research strand, there is an intensive programme of work exploring two crucial themes for schools and educational organisations: the ethical use of Artificial Intelligence and educational inclusion, analysing the social dynamics that influence public education in contexts of migration.

Through its second strand, Educational Innovation and Communities, INSPIRE aims to link research, development and the implementation of educational policies in collaboration with government institutions, universities and communities, particularly in Kenya and Vietnam – countries specifically selected by the project from among those experiencing crisis or rapid growth. INSPIRE plans to establish two research centres, one per country, in collaboration with local universities to support the creation of Sustainable Educational Research Communities (SERCs) comprising researchers, alongside teachers and educators, parents, as well as administrators at local and national levels. The aim of these communities will be to create, on the basis of research and experimentation, the conditions for developing innovative and context-specific educational policies.
An excerpt was also screened from the previously unpublished video interview with Carla Rinaldi by Sabine Lingenauber and Janina Von Niebelschutz, in which the Reggio Emilia-based educationalist states: “Every community must take care of its children. There is no society, no civilisation, if we do not take care of children”.
In the afternoon, the research phase of INSPIRE got into full swing with an audience of scholars, experts and teachers, featuring presentations by Davide Ruscelli, Coordinator of the International Task Force of Teachers for Education 2030, and Fabiana Lorenzi, Lecturer in Computer Science at Invenio Educação, Brazil. Together with workshop leaders and experts from the Reggio Children Foundation, topics such as quality educational policies, Artificial Intelligence, the Italian language as a sound-based subject, the design of a workshop, hidden childhoods and inclusive education were explored.

It was also announced on this occasion that the Reggio Children Foundation has been accepted into the Teachers Task Force, based at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. Established in 2008, following the agreement set out in the Oslo Declaration, the International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030, or Teacher Task Force (TTF), is an independent global alliance dedicated exclusively to teachers and education. The aim is to support countries on the issues raised by the 2030 Agenda in SDG 4: “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”. TTF members include national governments, intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations, international agencies, civil society organisations, the private sector and United Nations agencies. The only other Italian organisation involved is INDIRE.

The project is not aimed at educational experimentation, but at bringing about long-term structural change through the development of policy recommendations. INSPIRE’s objectives include: greater focus on child-centred policies; valuing teachers and educators as drivers of change; new and strengthened ecosystems of solidarity; advanced research and knowledge as a common good; and greater political awareness of education in conflict and crisis situations. The research findings will be shared with ministries of education and local authorities to promote, together with teachers, quality education that is increasingly aligned with children’s rights—a fundamental step towards building democratic citizenship, especially in highly complex contexts, as emphasised by the Reggio Children Foundation’s Charter of Values.

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