THE CITY AS ATELIER
Place-Based Learning
08–12 June 2025 | Reggio Emilia, Italy
Learning is never just about what we learn.
It is also about where.
Every space holds the potential to shape how we think, feel, and connect. Schools are just one node in a wider landscape of learning; streets, parks, libraries, markets, and museums each carry stories, perspectives, and invitations to see the world differently.
This 5-day professional learning experience explores the city as a living, breathing classroom. We ask: What does it mean to learn with a place, not just in it? How does the design of learning environments shape the ways we teach and learn? What new possibilities open when the city is an active participant in the learning process?
Drawing on Reggio Emilia as a living example, we explore how schools can enter into dialogue with their surroundings, transforming streets, piazzas, museums, and everyday places into sites of inquiry and creativity. Through reflective city walks, attentive observation, visits to schools and ateliers, and collaborative dialogue, we explore how to design experiences that are rooted in place, responsive to context, alive with possibility.
What if the city itself became the classroom?
Every place holds a story. Every story can become a lesson.
Many young people experience school as something separate from their daily lives, disconnected from their local contexts, interests, and identities. Classrooms too often emphasize preparation for the future while overlooking the importance of learning in the present. The result is a sense of distance: knowledge that is acquired, but not always lived.
We believe that education can be global, but it must also be rooted in the places we call home. Learning should begin where we are, in the lived environments, neighborhood issues, and everyday realities that shape our days. When education is grounded in place, when the city becomes the classroom, it is never only local. It becomes the foundation from which learners can engage critically with wider societal and global challenges. Connecting with local needs, resources, and voices helps learners see how knowledge is practiced and shared. It allows them to link classroom concepts to real-world issues, from the quality of air in their neighborhood to the complexities of climate change.
When schools step beyond their walls, the city itself becomes a co-teacher. Its parks, markets, libraries, and public spaces invite encounters that deepen understanding while also nurturing well-being, ecological awareness, and civic responsibility. A garden becomes a living lesson in interdependence. A walk through city streets opens questions of history, justice, and memory. A conversation with local artisans transforms abstract concepts into skills felt through the hands.
Each place carries stories and perspectives that, when noticed, turn ordinary surroundings into extraordinary classrooms. The city, in all its rhythms and layers, offers itself as an active participant in the learning process—an atelier where curiosity, belonging, and agency can take root.
Reggio Emilia | A Living Case Study
Reggio Emilia shows us how a city can become a classroom.
The Italian city of Reggio Emilia offers a unique lens into place-based learning. It stands as a powerful example of what it means to see the city itself as a teacher, where education, architecture, citizenship, and beauty are deeply intertwined. For more than sixty years, Reggio has shown the world how to design environments that listen, how to make visible the learning that often remains unseen, and how to root education in the life of the community.
Walking through Reggio, you notice how learning and daily life intermingle. The city demonstrates what becomes possible when schools listen to their context, value its resources, and invite learners to engage with it directly. It is a living case study in how place can shape pedagogy, and how pedagogy, in turn, can enrich place. Over decades, the city has cultivated an approach to education that treats schools, families, and public spaces as part of one interconnected learning ecosystem.
For visiting educators, Reggio Emilia is not a model to replicate, but an experience to reflect with. It shows how schools can weave themselves into the fabric of their city, and how cities can embrace education as a collective responsibility. By walking its streets, observing its schools, and engaging in dialogue with its people, we glimpse what becomes possible when education is shaped not only within classrooms, but with and through the life of a community.
This is why we chose Reggio Emilia—not only for its schools, but for the way the entire city becomes a learning space.
A Journey Made of Encounters: What Is Included
The program unfolds as an immersive learning journey, combining different formats — city walks, ateliers, workshops, cultural visits, and reflective dialogues — all grounded in the idea of the city as a classroom.
Key elements of the program include:
Exploring the city as classroom: guided walks, visits, and encounters with local institutions and schools.
A full-day school visit with opportunities to observe, engage, and exchange with atelieristas and pedagogistas.
Hands-on ateliers at the Loris Malaguzzi International Center and at Remida, the creative recycling center.
Cultural visits that connect participants to the social and historical fabric of Reggio Emilia.
Dialogues and reflections: structured discussions that connect experience with theory and practice.
Collaborative co-design sessions: participants work together to imagine how place-based learning can be adapted to their own contexts.
Wonder ToolKit for Place-Based Learning
A collection of projects, articles, and resources
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La Citta Cresce con Noi
La città cresce con noi — The City Grows With Us
In Reggio Emilia, the relationship between children and the city is understood as reciprocal: as children grow, so too does the city. La città cresce con noi is a project that makes this visible, highlighting how urban spaces and young citizens shape one another through imagination, participation, and care.
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Abitare il Paese
Abitare il Paese — Inhabiting the Country
This national project invites children, architects, and communities to imagine and redesign the spaces they live in. It is a call to see architecture and urban planning not as adult domains alone, but as shared civic practices that include the voices of the youngest citizens. By engaging children in rethinking the environments around them, Abitare il Paese strengthens the idea that education, design, and democracy grow together.
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Flags for Rights
Flags4Rights – 100 Bandiere per i Diritti
An outdoor exhibition in the historic center of Reggio Emilia transformed the city into a canvas for children’s voices. One hundred flags, designed by children and young people, carried their visions of rights, identity, and community into public space. Suspended above the streets on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the flags became a collective declaration: that children are citizens today, with perspectives that can shape civic life and inspire dialogue across generations.
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ReChild Newsletter | December 2023
This issue of Rechild, the Reggio Children newsletter, invites us into the living dialogue between schools and the city of Reggio Emilia.
Through the voices of children, families, and educators, the newsletter reflects on the City Childhood Councils, spaces where participation and democracy take root in everyday life. It is a glimpse into sixty years of Reggio’s journey, where education and community grow together, shaping a city that listens.
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Article | Children Are Citizens: The Everyday and the Razzle-Dazzle
By Mara Krechevsky, Ben Mardell, Tiziana Filippini, and Maddalena Tedeschi
This article invites us to see children not only as learners, but as citizens from birth, with the right to shape and be shaped by their cities. Drawing on experiences in Reggio Emilia and Washington, DC, it shares how children’s voices, desires, and imaginative visions can transform public spaces into democratic laboratories of life.
Course Fee & What’s Included
Course Fee: €950
The program unfolds as a place-based, immersive learning journey, combining city walks, ateliers, workshops, cultural visits, and reflective dialogues — all grounded in the idea of the city as a classroom.
Key elements of the experience include:
Exploring the city as a learning landscape: guided walks, site visits, and encounters with local institutions and schools.
A full-day school visit: opportunities to observe, engage, and exchange with atelieristas and pedagogistas.
Hands-on ateliers at the Loris Malaguzzi International Center and at Remida, the creative recycling center.
Cultural experiences that connect participants to the social, historical, and aesthetic fabric of Reggio Emilia.
Reflective dialogues that bridge experience with theory and practice.
Collaborative co-design sessions to imagine how place-based learning can evolve within each participant’s context.
Your participation also covers bus transportation as required within the program, translation support from Italian to English, and three shared meals (one lunch and two dinners).
Further details and the full program schedule will be provided to registered participants.
PRE-REGISTRATION FORM
This form allows us to get to know you and your context as we curate the learning group for The City as Atelier.
Once submitted, we will reach out with confirmation and details about the next steps.
FAQs
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This program is designed for professionals engaged in education and learning design who wish to explore the possibilities of place-based learning.
It is particularly relevant for:
Educators and school leaders from early childhood to higher education
Designers and architects specializing in educational spaces
Artists, museum educators, and cultural practitioners working in educational contexts
Learning designers and facilitators seeking to integrate community and environment into their practice
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Both options are possible. Individuals bring fresh perspectives, while teams from the same school or organization benefit from a shared learning journey.
We encourage team participation, as the experience is enriched when schools, organizations, or design practices join with multiple voices.
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The program is conducted in English and structured as a co-design lab, where each participant is an active contributor.
For selected activities, such as school visits or local presentations, professional translation services are provided.
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We intentionally keep the group small to ensure meaningful dialogue and collaboration. Each course is limited to 20 participants, which allows us to work closely together during ateliers, workshops, and guided school visits.
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Yes. The course is fully compatible with Erasmus+ KA1 funding. While our participants come from many parts of the world, we reserve 25% of places for Erasmus+ funded institutions, who can join at a discounted rate. If you plan to participate with Erasmus+ support, please contact us to secure your spot.