The five finalists for the 2021 Amateo Award have been announced!
We are delighted to introduce the five creative projects led by amateur arts groups across Europe that will participate in the 4th annual Amateo Award ceremony in:
Milan, Italy, on Friday 29 October, from 6pm CET!
Featuring a great mix of art forms, these projects have demonstrated resilience and innovative ways of delivering creative activities in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2021 finalists are:
- PAMIS & The Arts End of Somewhere (Scotland, UK)
- Drama Express (England, UK)
- Volksgarten: from rejection to dream spot (Austria)
- Toonspeak (Scotland, UK)
- On the Move: Poems and Songs of Migration (Belgium)
The jury members who selected the five finalists were: Anasa Cultural Centre – 2020 Amateo Award winner (Social Circus Athens project, Greece), Saša Strnad – 2018 Amateo Award finalist (Touching project) and Sophie Dowden, Project and Fundraising Manager at the European Choral Association (UK).
MEET THE FINALISTS:
PAMIS, promoting a more inclusive society, is the only charity that solely supports children, young people and adults with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) and their families to lead healthy, valued and included lives doing the things they want to do within their community. They offer a range of projects and programmes including our multi-sensory storytelling and performance work with the volunteer arts collective The Arts End of Somewhere.
Drama Express provides young people with complex disabilities the opportunity to access the performing arts within Cornwall. Drama Express aims to end the isolation of many young people with complex disabilities, linking the benefits of drama to maintaining positive mental health. Through nurturing the individual talents of its members, Drama Express recognizes the importance of creating, developing and sustaining peer group friendships through a shared experience of drama.
Volksgarten: from rejection to dream spot: In the summer of 2020, maiz made an intervention at the “Volksgarten” park in Linz, Austria. It was an initiative of the self-organized association maiz, in cooperation with Sounding Linz. The project proposes a navigation through a transcultural space that from a hegemonic perspective is often seen as an area of conflict. Unemployed, migrants and refugees are present at Volksgarten from spring to autumn, representing a social class, which finds no hearing in society. In this walk, maiz proposes a reading of this space through the convergence of sound and imagination. At the end, through the multiple re-enactment of this walk, participants became part of a shared space.
In response to the Coronavirus pandemic, Toonspeak created three distinct but complementary projects to support the incredibly vulnerable young people throughout the city of Glasgow through: Creative Calm, Access to Digital Creativity and Projects by Post. In launching this response programme, the group wanted to maintain critical relationships with the young people and within Toonspeak’s community, to support digital creativity and to support the wellbeing and mental health of the young people.
People come to Europe from all over the world in search of a new life. This is particularly evident in Brussels. To celebrate this diversity and welcome asylum seekers, poet and author, Sarah Reader Harris, and musician and songwriter, Marieke Slovin Lewis created “On the Move: Poems and Songs of Migration”, a participatory arts project for creative and cultural exchange between longtime residents of Belgium and those who have just arrived.
The award ceremony will be a hybrid event, taking place in-person at Palazzo Castiglioni in Milan and online via Vimeo or our Facebook page. Make sure to set a reminder for the live streaming and join us from the comfort of your home… wherever you are in the world!
We’re wishing the best of luck to all five finalist groups! Make sure you follow us on Facebook and Twitter for live updates from the awards ceremony on Friday 29 October, 6pm (CET).
ABOUT THE AMATEO AWARD
The Amateo Award celebrates excellence in the voluntary and amateur arts, meaning those activities led by the community for their own benefit. Over the past three years, we have been shining a light on various groups and projects tackling social inclusion, innovation, diversity and local heritage through arts and creativity.
Last year, 64 projects from 16 countries across Europe applied for the Amateo Award 2020 and featured activity focused on young people, older people (including those with dementia), those with different cultural or migrant backgrounds and projects to improve the community or environment. Five groups were shortlisted by the jury. Read more about the 2020 finalists.

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