THE CITY AS ATELIER
Place-Based Learning
04-10 October 2026
Reggio Emilia, Italy
At a Glance
Dates: 04 - 10 October 2026
Location: Reggio Emilia, Italy
Who it's for: Educators, school leaders, architects, museum and cultural practitioners, learning designers — individually or as a team
Language: English, with professional Italian–English translation for selected sessions and school visits.
Group size: Limited to 20 participants. The program is confirmed upon reaching 15 registrations.
Program fee: From €660, with optional add-ons. Erasmus+ KA1 fundable
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.
In this professional learning experience, we explore 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?
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, and alive with possibility.
What if the city itself became the classroom?
Every place holds a story.
Every story can become a lesson.
When schools step beyond their walls, the city becomes a co-teacher. Its parks, markets, libraries, and public spaces invite encounters that deepen understanding while 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.
We believe that education can be global, but it must also be rooted in the places we call home. When learning begins where we are — in lived environments, neighbourhood rhythms, and everyday realities — it stops being something acquired and starts being something lived. And when it is lived, it travels. Students who have learned to read their own place are far better equipped to engage critically with the wider world.
A Journey Made of Encounters: Sample Program
The program unfolds across the week through city walks, ateliers, workshops, guided visits to educational institutions, cultural encounters, and reflective dialogue. Participants move through Reggio Emilia — not as tourists, but as learners with a question: What can this city teach us about how learning happens?
Day 1 — Sunday, 4 October: Arriving & Orienting Afternoon arrival and hotel check-in; free time to settle into the city. Evening: welcome aperitivo and group dinner — introductions, first conversations, and the beginning of something.
Day 2 — Monday, 5 October: The City as Teacher Morning: a facilitated city walk through Reggio Emilia, observing piazzas, streets, markets, and public spaces through an educational lens. Reflective dialogue and open windows — time for participants to share their contexts and questions. Afternoon: seminar on designing city-based inquiry experiences — frameworks, principles, and practical tools for transforming urban environments into sites of learning. Evening: free exploration of the city.
Day 3 — Tuesday, 6 October: Craft, Food & Materials Morning: visit to a Parmigiano Reggiano factory — a living lesson in how place, materials, time, and generational expertise shape understanding. Afternoon: REMIDA visit and hands-on workshop — Reggio Emilia's creative recycling centre, where discarded materials become tools for expression and inquiry. Evening: free in Reggio Emilia.
Day 4 — Wednesday, 7 October: Reggio Children Morning: full immersion at the Loris Malaguzzi International Center — the history, values, and educational experience of Reggio Emilia schools. Afternoon: guided tour of the permanent exhibitions and ateliers of the Hundred Languages. Evening: Atelier dei Sapori at Pause — a multisensory experience placing the languages of food at its centre, including OctoStudio, storie di gusto (Fondazione Reggio Children × MIT Boston).
Day 5 — Thursday, 8 October: Schools & the City Full-day school visit. Morning: observation at Scuola in Golena / Nido Comunale 'Carmen Zanti', Brescello — guided by pedagogistas and atelieristas. Afternoon: professional formation session at Sala Civica Prampolini, Brescello — facilitated dialogue bridging observed practice with participants' own contexts. Late afternoon: visit to Nido Iride — exploring a second early childhood environment. Evening: return to Reggio Emilia.
Day 6 — Friday, 9 October: Closing DayMorning: guided visit to Il Borgo del Balsamico — an immersive encounter with the ancient craft of traditional balsamic vinegar. A final place-based experience. Afternoon:: course roundup, collective reflection, and Certificate of Completion ceremony.
Day 7 - Saturday, 10 October: Half-day guided cultural program. Departures
This is a provisional programme. Exact timings and sequence may be refined. Confirmed details are shared with registered participants ahead of the course.
What You’ll Take Home
A curated set of prompts and protocols for city walks, observation, and place-based inquiry — usable in your own context immediately.
Design ideas and concrete examples drawn from Reggio schools, ateliers, and community projects — adapted to a range of educational settings.
A draft plan for one or two place-based projects shaped around your learners, your setting, and your constraints.
Shared language and conceptual frameworks to support conversations with colleagues, school leaders, and families about place-based learning.
A Certificate of Completion, which may be applied toward professional development hours where applicable.
And something harder to name but just as real: a renewed relationship with your own place, and the confidence to design learning experiences rooted in context, community, and curiosity.
What is included?
Overview: What You Pay
Option 1: Base week
Course Fee €660
Participant Services and Cultural Program €240
Total: €900
Option 2: Base week + atelier upgrade €1,010
Option 3: Base week + school visits €1,250
Option 4: Base + school visits + atelier upgrade
€1,360
Course fee: €660
Covers the five-day professional learning program, expert facilitation, preparation, materials, and certificate of participation.
Full participation in the program
Facilitation, interpretation, and pedagogical accompaniment throughout the week
One Day program at Loris Malaguzzi International Center
Visits to cultural projects and learning spaces, including REMIDA
Guided pedagogical encounters, visits to ateliers and learning spaces
The programme is intentionally designed as a small-group experience to allow for dialogue, reflection, and meaningful exchange among participants.
Participant services and cultural program (mandatory): €240
Participant welcome packet with schedule, readings, and practical information
Professional translation services from Italian to English
Course materials and collective documentation, including professional media package with videos and photos
Transportation within the programme when required
Welcome aperitivo on Sunday evening
Atelier on gastronomic traditions of Reggio Emilia
Closing celebration meal
Cultural program to choose among:
Visit to Parmigiano Reggiano Factory
Visit to Il Borgo del Balsamico (chosen as one of the best 100 products of Italy)
Half-Day Guided Tour in Modena or Parma
Optional Add-Ons
Two ways to deepen the week, chosen when you register.
Atelier experience at the Loris Malaguzzi International Centre
€110
One full day visit to the Loris Malaguzzi International Centre is included in the base program. This optional add-on extends the experience with a hands-on atelier session led by the Centre’s atelieristas.
A day inside two remarkable educational settings
€350
Participants spend the day visiting Scuola in Golena and Nido Iride — two deeply inspiring educational environments in the wider Reggio Emilia area.
The experience includes pedagogical dialogue, translation, lunch, and transport, offering participants the opportunity to encounter educational practice not as theory, but as something lived daily through relationships, materials, spaces, and routines.
Participants who do not choose this add-on join a parallel learning program included in the base week.
Not Included
Travel to and from Reggio Emilia
Accommodation
Other meals and personal expenses
Optional activities outside the programme schedule
Detailed practical information, accommodation suggestions, and travel guidance are shared with registered participants after confirmation.
Our Team
Ozgen Bagci
Ozgen is an educator, learning designer, and community connector whose work explores the intersection of imagination, place-based learning, and creative pedagogy. She is the founder and creative director of Educ@demy, where she designs and facilitates immersive learning experiences that invite educators to see cities, materials, and everyday environments as active partners in learning. She currently serves as Academic Program Director at ETS Local Partner in Italy and as a Community Lead for Western Europe at HundrED.
Founder & Creative Director
A.J. brings two decades of experience designing programs and schools to expand opportunities for all learners. As a high school principal, middle school teacher, nonprofit founder, university professor, and Harvard fellow, he brings fluency across the full arc of education — from the classroom to policy to institutional redesign. He holds a doctorate in Educational Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania and is a Strategic Data Project Fellow at Harvard's Center for Education Policy Research. He serves as a Community Ambassador and Innovation Evaluator for HundrED.
Lead FacilitatorA.J. Ernst, Ed.D.
In Reggio Emilia, the city itself is our co-facilitator. The atelieristas and educators at the Loris Malaguzzi International Center, the researchers and creative practitioners at REMIDA, the pedagogistas and atelieristas of Scuola in Golena and Nido Iride, the artisan guiding us through a Parmigiano Reggiano dairy, the keeper of traditions at Il Borgo del Balsamico — all are part of how we learn together here. Knowledge lives in people, in materials, and in place.
Reggio Emilia | A Living Case Study
For more than sixty years, Reggio Emilia 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. Schools, families, and public spaces function as one interconnected learning ecosystem. The environment is understood as the third teacher — shaping dialogue, agency, and possibility.
For visiting educators, Reggio Emilia is not a model to replicate. It is an experience to think with. It shows how schools can weave themselves into the fabric of their city, and how cities can embrace education as a collective responsibility. This is why we chose it — not only for its schools, but for the way the entire city becomes a learning space.
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.
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Glimpses from June 2025
Wonder ToolKit for Place-Based Learning
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Frequently Asked Questions
Still have questions? Take a look at the FAQ or reach out anytime. If you’re feeling ready, go ahead and apply.
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Reggio Week is one professional learning week in Reggio Emilia, running two parallel programs side by side. The City as Atelier explores place-based learning and the city as a learning environment; Designing Learning explores the relationship between art, architecture, creativity, and pedagogy. Each participant chooses one journey and follows it across the week, while the two groups come together through shared sessions, meals, cultural visits, dialogues, and moments of reflection. So you are not choosing between three separate courses — you are choosing one of two journeys within the same week.
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04–10 October 2026, in Reggio Emilia, Italy. The week runs from Sunday arrival to Saturday departure, with five days of program in between.
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We welcome everyone who designs, nurtures, or reimagines spaces of learning and culture — educators across all levels, school leaders, pedagogistas and atelieristas, architects and designers, artists, librarians, museum and community-space professionals, researchers, policy makers, and cultural practitioners. Whether you work with young children, adolescents, university students, or adults, the week invites you into a shared exploration of how creativity, pedagogy, and imagination can shape meaningful learning across contexts and disciplines.
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Not in the official sense. Reggio Emilia is the place where this work was born, and the Reggio Approach is the rich soil from which many of the experiences and spaces we will visit have grown — so its influence runs through the week. But Reggio Children is the institution that holds the official Reggio Approach training, and if that is specifically what you are looking for, you will find their study groups and professional learning programs on the Reggio Children website. Our week takes a wider lens: it draws on the Reggio tradition while opening a panorama of perspectives on creativity, atelier practice, materials, place, and the design of learning environments — bringing together voices from education, architecture, art, and culture into a shared inquiry.
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Read the descriptions of The City as Atelier and Designing Learning, then choose the journey that best fits your role, interests, and professional development goals. If you're unsure which is the better fit, contact us and we'll help you decide.
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Both are possible. Individuals bring fresh and often unexpected perspectives, and if you join alone you will not feel it for long. We also warmly encourage teams, as the experience is enriched when schools, organizations, or design practices arrive with multiple voices. Coordinators planning a group — including Erasmus+ mobilities — will find a dedicated section for group registrations.
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English throughout, structured as a co-design lab in which each participant is an active contributor. Professional Italian–English translation is provided for school visits and selected sessions.
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Each program is limited to 20 participants — large enough for genuine diversity, small enough that no one disappears. The deliberately small size keeps ateliers, workshops, and guided visits close and the dialogue meaningful.
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Complete the pre-registration form and tell us about your context, your role, and what brings you to Reggio Week. Because the groups are small and intentionally curated, we review each pre-registration carefully. Once your place is confirmed, you complete payment to reserve it — spots are limited to twenty per program. If your Erasmus+ grant has not yet been disbursed, contact us and we'll discuss a payment timeline that fits your institution's process.
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We recommend booking flights and accommodation only once your place is confirmed and the cohort is finalised. We're happy to share recommendations on where to stay in Reggio Emilia.
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No. The total amount you pay is the one shown in your registration form. We do not charge extra enrollment fees, deposits, or hidden costs.
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The €660 course fee covers the five-day professional learning program, expert facilitation, preparation, materials, a full day at the Loris Malaguzzi International Centre, visits to cultural projects and learning spaces including REMIDA, and a certificate of participation. The mandatory €240 participant services and cultural program covers translation, transport within the program, the shared meals (welcome aperitivo, gastronomic atelier, closing celebration), course materials and media package, and a cultural visit. Optional add-ons are chosen separately at registration.
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Once your place is confirmed, we send a booking confirmation with full payment instructions. Payment is made by bank transfer, and the bank details and the reference to include in your payment description are provided in that confirmation message. No payment is requested while a course is still pending confirmation — you only pay once your spot is secured. Once your transfer is complete, please email the confirmation to info@educademy-eu.com for our records. If your Erasmus+ grant has not yet been disbursed, contact us and we'll agree a payment timeline that fits your institution's process.
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Cancellations must be notified to us by email at info@educademy-eu.com. If you cancel shortly after registering, statutory withdrawal rights may apply; in all cases, please contact us and we'll confirm how they apply to your booking. Because our group is small and many costs — translation, school visits, catering, and venues — are committed in advance, we ask you to let us know as early as possible. If something prevents you from attending, we will always look first for an alternative that works better than a refund:
You may transfer your place to a colleague at no additional cost, at any time before the course begins.
You may reschedule to a future Educ@demy program, subject to availability, at no additional cost.
If neither option suits you, our refund terms are:
Cancellations notified more than 6 weeks before the start of the course: full refund, minus a €150 administrative fee.
Cancellations notified between 6 and 4 weeks before the start: refund of the course fee, minus the €150administrative fee and the €240 participant services and cultural program fee, which by this point is committed to translation, catering, and transport.
Cancellations notified less than 4 weeks before the start: the fee paid is retained, as our commitments to partners can no longer be recovered.
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Educ@demy is not liable for costs arising from circumstances beyond our control — including travel disruption, illness, or decisions of public authorities. In the event of a cancellation required by an official authority (EU, national government, or National Agency), we will refund the course fee paid, minus a €150 administrative cost per participant. For this reason, we strongly recommend booking only flexible flights and accommodation, and arranging your own travel and health insurance, which is obligatory and at your own responsibility.
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If we are unable to confirm a session — for example, if it does not reach the minimum number of participants — you will not be charged, and any payment already made is refunded in full. This is why we ask you to wait until your place is confirmed before booking flights and accommodation. Please note that Educ@demy cannot reimburse travel or accommodation costs in the event of a cancellation, so flexible bookings are always the safest choice.
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Yes. All participants receive a Certificate of Participation, which may be applied toward professional development hours where applicable.
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Travel to and from Reggio Emilia, accommodation, meals outside the shared program meals, and any optional activities outside the program schedule. Once your place is confirmed, we share recommendations on neighbourhoods, hotels, and travel routes.