AMATEO was established in Ljubljana, Slovenia, on June 21, 2008, and was registered as an international organisation under Belgian law on October 2, 2008, in Ghent, Belgium.
AMATEO was created by members of several European organisations dealing with amateur, free-time, socio-cultural, voluntary activities and the culture of local areas through the conferences “art4all” in Utrecht (2004) and “Value, Include, Connect” in Cardiff (2005). After the 2005 conference in Wales, a website – www.envaa.org – was launched using the name ‘European Network of the Voluntary and Amateur Arts ’. There has, however, been huge resistance in some countries to the words ‘voluntary’ and ‘amateur’ so it was subsequently agreed that the focus of the initiative should be ‘active participation’.
After several meetings of the initiative committee (in Ljubljana and Copenhagen) the turning point was the Ljubljana Conference (2008) where the European network was formally founded.
