Events
Reconsidering Relations With Waste in Early Childhood & School Age: VRA Fall Conference 2025
October 24, 2025
9:00 am - 3:00 pm
Burnaby Lake Rowing Pavillion
Free – 124
The current ecological crisis demands new ways of relating with waste. In education, artistic processes bring possibilities for transforming how educators ‘see’ the excesses of daily life with children, and for engaging with waste materials in ways that provoke more liveable social formations.
Join us on Friday, October 24, for a day of engagement with and rethinking of common "waste" materials. The conference will be facilitated by a group of educators, atelieristas (artists/educators), and researchers who have been brought together to consider the pedagogical possibilities of what is often referred to as “waste.” Attendees will work in both large and small groups and will be invited to reimagine sustainable practices by learning about the possibilities of everyday "waste" materials and how they might experiment with these ideas in their specific contexts.
This conference will involve a sharing of early beginnings of a creative reuse project in Calgary inspired by the ReMida centre of Reggio Emilia. Attendees will be invited into a series of small, mundane experimentations that bring artful attention to waste materials and their pedagogical propositions. The day will be facilitated by a group of educators, atelieristas, and researchers who have been brought together to consider the pedagogical possibilities of waste.
Presenters:
Taylor Innes, Lisa Menzies and Felicia Ollenberger, Directors, Common Digs Forest School Early Learning Centres; ReImagine Centre/Creative ReUse Project, Calgary, AB
Sayward Wilkinson Blanc, Atelierista, Common Digs and the Creative ReUse project, Calgary Reggio Network Board Member, Calgary, AB
Tatiana Zakharova-Goodman & Sylvia Kind, Atelieristas & Instructors of Early Childhood Care and Education, Capilano University
Alex Berry, Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education, University of Calgary
Date: Oct 24, 2025
Location: Burnaby Lake Rowing Pavilion
Time: 9 am - 3 pm
NOTE: To purchase a ticket, please select the number of tickets and click the "Get Tickets" button. Organization would like to purchase multiple tickets for your team. The ticket system would enable you to input the information for each participant.
Subsidy provided for early childhood educators (BC licensed ECEs and ECEAs) by the Early Childhood Professional Development Fund. Please note: to qualify for the ECE bursary, registrants must register individually with home address in BC and complete questionnaire.
This initiative is partially funded through the Canada-British Columbia Early Learning and Child Care (ELCC) Agreement between the Government of Canada and the Province of British Columbia, in partnership with the Westcoast Family Centres (Westcoast), the agency responsible for administering the funds.
One objective of this agreement is to enhance the quality of licensed child care programs by supporting the training and professional development of early childhood professionals. This funding is available for ongoing professional development after certification or licensing.
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