Remembering Carla Rinaldi
1945 - 2025
12 months to the day (16 April 2025) from the passing of Carla Rinaldi, Reggio Emilia Aotearoa New Zealand and our Regional Networks would like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude and appreciation for the exchanges and dialogue over the years with Carla, acknowledging the influence of the Reggio Emilia Approach on education here in Aoteraoa New Zealand.
In 2005, a conference was held in Auckland to share and celebrate the pedagogy of Reggio Emilia, now known as the Reggio Approach. The title of the conference was Provoking Encounters; Transforming Thought. Carla (then Carlina/little Carla) Rinaldi was invited as a guest speaker, along with Margie Carter, Deb Curtis, and Ellen Hall from the USA.
** The recording is 1.47 minutes in length. We are suggest that you view the first 36 minutes of Carlina Rinaldi’s keynote address (-36.00min) AND then Brenda Soutar’s response (11 minutes) from (1.05-1.16) 47 min total.
Brenda Soutar (as co-founder of Mana Tamariki in Palmerston North) was the respondent to Carla’s keynote address. Margaret Carr (one of the writers of Te Whāriki 1996) and Diti Hill were also keynote speakers. The photos below, starting on the left, show the moment between Carla and Brenda in 2005 and then, nearly 20 years on from the Study Group in 2024. Carla invited the NZ study group to her office where she shared fond memories of her time spent in Aotearoa and continued to invite and tautoko cross-cultural dialogue and respect.
Regional Tributes - our own local contexts
In commemoration of Carla's passing, we invited our REANZ Regional Networks to also watch the recording from 2005 and provide a response.