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 in our own local contexts.
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 following their exchanges, on to the photos from the Study Group in 2024 where Brenda and Carla reconnected once more.
Regional Tributes - our own local contexts
Our Regional Networks watched the recording from 2005 and share the following responses as an offer of perspectives and interpretations.