Kate Middleton: Italy and Reggio Emilia as her first trip abroad after cancer

The visit of the Princess of Wales, Kate Middleton, to Reggio Emilia is scheduled to take place between May 13 and 14, 2026, and is no mere ceremonial appointment. It's a milestone in the work of The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood, founded by the Princess herself in 2021.

The stated aim is to closely observe the "Reggio Emilia Approach", an educational approach that has been attracting international interest for decades.

The initiative is part of the "Shaping Us" project, the campaign launched in 2023 to highlight the first five years of life, considered decisive for the emotional and cognitive development of human beings. And this is precisely where Reggio Emilia becomes central: not just as an Italian city, but as an educational laboratory recognized in over 140 countries.

The Reggio Emilia Approach: an educational and social vision

The Reggio Emilia Approach® is not a rigid method, but an educational philosophy built around a precise idea: the child as an active subject with rights, capable of learning through what are known as the "hundred languages". These languages include play, movement, drawing, speech, music and many other forms of expression.

At the heart of this approach is a profoundly social vision of education: development is never individual, but arises from relationships with others and with the environment. Reggio Emilia's nursery schools and municipal crèches thus become shared spaces, where the community actively participates in the educational process. Elements such as the workshop, the presence of several educators, the documentation of learning processes and the centrality of the environment as the "third educator" all contribute to this.environment as a "third educator" contribute to building a system that is recognized worldwide for its ability to make learning creative and participatory.

Loris Malaguzzi and the origins of a model born of reconstruction

The story of this model has its roots in the post-war period, when a group of citizens, particularly women, decided to build new schools from the rubble of the conflict. The central figure in this movement was Loris Malaguzzi, a pedagogue who, in the 1950s, helped to forge a new concept of childhood, no longer centered on assistance, but on democratic participation.

In 1950, the first municipal psycho-pedagogical center was set up, followed in 1963 by the first municipal nursery school and, in 1971, the first crèche. A journey that anticipated Italian national legislation and transformed Reggio Emilia into an international educational benchmark.

Reggio Children and the worldwide dissemination of the model

In parallel with the method, Reggio Children, an international center promoting children's rights and spreading the Reggio model throughout the world, was set up. The aim is to promote an education system that sees school not just as a place of learning, but as a veritable bastion of democracy and community life. Today, the Reggio Emilia approach is studied and applied in educational contexts on every continent, becoming one of the most widely observed pedagogical experiments in the world. And it's precisely this heritage that has caught the interest of Princess Kate, who is committed to understanding how the first years of life can be supported by educational environments based on relationships, listening and shared creativity.

Source: Reggio Emilia Approach