A Lot's Been Happening Pt 1.

It has been a while since the last blog post. There have been a few reasons for this, but the main reason has been our focus on our upcoming events and travel plans. I am writing this post in Geelong at the start of a two-day visit with the team from Kardinia Early Learning, sharing our experience of being a ReMida Centre in an Australian context. After a 4 am start, smooth flights, and a great car trip from Melbourne to Geelong, it seemed like a good time to bring our community up to date. To keep this post to a reasonable size, we will share it in two parts because there has been and still is quite a bit going on at ReMida.

Much of July was devoted to the final exhibition of the Storytellers Project. The team at ECU Mt Lawley once again made Gallery 16 available for free, and about two hundred visitors engaged with the works over the ten days. Lotterywest provided just under $70,000 in funding to support the Project over the last 14 months, and we have met amazing people along the way. We are finalizing the online gallery, dubbed the Virtual Campfire, over the next couple of weeks, and you can view most of the works on ReMida’s website. The end of a Project is often as demanding as the start, but as that chapter closes, another one opens.

We have just commenced a series of free professional learning sessions thanks to the support of the City of Stirling’s Quick Response Funding program. You can find details and ticketing information on Eventbrite or by emailing education@remidawa.com, spaces are limited so even though it is free, grabbing a ticket is still essential. These sessions have a practical focus and explore how non-traditional materials work in various contexts. Special thanks to Charlotte from the ReMida team for helping to arrange the sessions and to the Inglewood Library for allowing us to host the sessions in one of their meeting rooms.

In September, ReMida will be at the Mandurah Arts Festival, hosting the Mysterious Fort of Reclaimed Things, an all-ages fort and cubbyhouse building session that is also a race against the clock. The activity is great for families and anyone keen to relive the joy of making a couch-fort-like construction from an assortment of ReMida materials. Shout out to Jane from the City of Mandurah, who helped us put the activity together and helped us with funding and a venue. You can find the details of this one on Eventbrite or by emailing education@remidawa.com; tickets are $5 per person, the proceeds from which go straight back into covering the costs of delivering the event.

In late July, ReMida welcomed Vittoria Cecchi, a Reggio-trained pedagogist who joined the team at ReMida Perth on a short-term contract. We met Vittoria last year during the ReMida conference hosted by ReMida Vaggeryd, and her passion for the Reggio approach and the ReMida Project was inspiring. Vittoria’s focus is the connections between the Reggio Approach, ReMida waste pedagogies, our connections to the European ReMida networks, and what it means to be a Reggio-inspired ReMida Centre in Perth, Western Australia. As we head back to Italy this September to attend the opening of the new ReMida space in Reggio Emilia, the early drafts of Vittoria’s work will help us share our journey with other centres worldwide.

Okay, so that is the end of part one, and we have not even finished with all the news for September or started in October. Thank you for reading along. Please share this with any of your fellow Reggio and ReMida enthusiasts, as it helps us to let everyone know what’s happening at ReMida.