La Grande Utopia

"Utopia is not the name of the absurd… it is the name of desires, ideas, projects that can become reality. Imagining new goals and then achieving them is the recurring pattern in the history of the men and women of this planet." (Gino Strada, One Person at a Time, Feltrinelli, 2022)

In the past three years, an increasing number of Comprehensive Institutes, school buildings, and Provincial Centers for Adult Education have been named after Gino Strada, surgeon and founder of EMERGENCY, who passed away suddenly in 2021. These institutions did not simply choose a different name for their building, they chose to share with all those who sit in their classrooms an example to look up to.

Starting from these schools, the project aims to give voice to students so that their concrete ideas and proposals, their ways of observing and analyzing the world, may be acknowledged within the school, shared within their families, and spread throughout the communities in which the schools are rooted.

To fulfill the project’s objectives, the working group, following several moments of dialogue and exchange with the teachers, will propose possible workshop-based experiences, potential additions to the projects already underway within the various contexts. 

There will be multiple contexts of creative learning, based on conceptual understanding and specific content, which will intertwine with the goals of the vertical curriculum. Documentation will play a very important role as an experience and memory of what has happened and what can progressively come to be. Documentation as a testimony of the research and the learning taking place within the group of adults and children.

The core themes of the activities will be the culture of peace and the right to participation and active citizenship, values long cherished by EMERGENCY and FRC.

A project that expresses EMERGENCY’s aspiration to abolish war through the philosophy and importance of childhood promoted by the Reggio Emilia approach: during the 2024/2025 school year, workshops and discussions were carried out starting from daily life, stories, and graphic works created together with the preschool, primary, and secondary schools.

From November 2024 to May 2025, a series of meetings were held for the co-design of activities and discussions on the Reggio Emilia educational experience. 

The project aims to collaborate with the Gino Strada Comprehensive Institute on several levels:

Teacher training: 4 online meetings to discuss the Reggio Emilia educational experience and the project’s focus, which is to promote a culture of peace starting from the active role of children; Co-designing activities: 8 online meetings with teachers to jointly plan the workshop activities to be proposed in class, based on moments of dialogue, listening, and conversation with both children and adolescents; Ongoing teacher support: planned throughout the entire project to keep the dialogue and exchange with the whole working group alive at all times; Path development: 4 sessions per 3 sections/classes (12 meetings in total) to work with children in laboratory experiences focused on the theme of Peace and other conceptual topics that emerge in class from listening to the children themselves.

The final goal is to organize, at the end of the workshop phase, a moment of reflection and sharing with the school and the community of Sesto Fiorentino.

Posters for peace, created by children

One of the most visible outcomes of the project was the creation of a series of posters featuring graphics and text, based on the reflections, thoughts and words of the children involved. These works are not merely school projects, but genuine public statements addressing the local area and the community: in September 2025, they were displayed on the streets of Reggio Emilia and subsequently in Sesto Fiorentino as well.

Download the printable version and help spread messages of peace!
(Italian only)

Browse the gallery to view all the posters!

Project outputs

Down with the war: a peaceful bibliography 0–99

The bibliography "Down with the War", a title inspired by a peace poster created by a young girl, stems from the "La Grande Utopia" project: it offers reading recommendations for all ages, aimed at fostering a culture of peace.

Promoting the hundred languages of children is a major part of the work carried out by Fondazione Reggio Children. Together with EMERGENCY, this becomes a way of trying to imagine something that does not yet exist: the end of wars!

You can download the bibliography here. Happy reading!
(Italian only)

Project documentation

A workbook that recounts and documents the various experiences of the La Grande Utopia project. An open, evolving resource designed to support further avenues of research and dialogue for schools, teachers, and children. An introduction to the possibilities opened up by pedagogical documentation, focusing on the idea that school is a place of research where educational practice and theory intertwine and develop.

You can download the documentation here.
(Italian only)