What is ReMida?
ReMida is a cultural project born in Reggio Emilia in 1996 to promote a new way of considering the ecology through the valorization of waste as objects useful for living a creative and educational experience in full respect of the environment. The purpose of ReMida is to give new life, through creative reutilization, to materials that would otherwise be thrown away, apparently without value.
Companies can donate production waste to ReMida centers (providing it is clean and non-hazardous) which is then selected, displayed and made available to teachers, students, associations, educators, library and games room operators and citizens in general for educational and creative purposes (on a non-profit basis), who pay an annual subscription.

ReMidaBiella

The myth of the Third paradise, where man develops creative responsibility to cohabit with nature, meets the Remedian philosophy, in which waste is a resource to be creatively re-utilized.
From the union of these two concepts comes the ReMidaBiella center.

The ReMida project represents a new, optimistic and propositive way of living ecology and constructing change by valorizing waste materials, rejects and objects with no apparent value, to access the idea of new possibilities for communication and creativity, in a new logic of respect for the object, the environment and mankind.

One of the aims is to bring together the worlds of culture and education, enterprise and institutions to create new resources.

Materials are the educational and formative pretext for every experience within the center. They leave the circuits linked with industrial production and the economy, and enter with new-found dignity into educational and didactic contexts, education in creativity itself, indeed, being one of the founding concepts of the entire “remidian” philosophy.

The project began in Reggio Emilia on the 2nd of December 1996, as a project of the Commune of Reggio, and is managed by the International Association of Friends of Reggio Children. Its formula has spread through Italy and the world, weaving an intercultural network for exchanging ideas, projects and experiences, from Europe all the way to Australia.

The Biella Industrial District, that today more than ever has to aim toward an integrated valorization of the territory in its combination of industrial-productive, natural and cultural components, is particularly suited to the development of the innovative ReMidaBiella project, which effectively combines the world of enterprise with those of culture and the environment. The initiative offers a different perspective on objects that no longer have any apparent value, but that can ‘rise again’ thanks to creative re-utilization. It is an opportunity for socio-cultural change capable of generating new areas for research, design and horizontal actions involving different disciplines (education, art, ecology, economics, scientific research).

The ReMidaBiella project is based on the shared desire of the community to make a commitment to making the environment, education and creativity the guiding lines for the re-launch of the Biella district, first and foremost by involving schools as a means to reach the district’s companies, associations and institutions.

The vision on which Cittadellarte’s philosophy hinges is expressed in the concept-symbol defined by Michelangelo Pistoletto as the Third paradise. During its recent didactic activities and workshops, Cittadellarte has identified a fundamental coherence between its own particular vision and the philosophy intrinsic in the ReMida project, thus uniting the two distinct, though converging experiences in the ReMidaBiella center. The philosophy of the ReMida project marries the intrinsic value of Responsible Creativity.