The ArtePollino association was found in February 2008 with the aim to encourage the cultural growth of the Pollino park's territory, promoting each kind of artistic expression, above all the contemporary one. ArtePollino is a project based on the local development, which is part of the "Sensi Contemporanei" programme, fostered by the Basilicata region, the Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and the Venice Biennale. The association promoted and promotes different initiatives aimed to get the local communities, the schools, the teaching staff involved to advertise the project thanks to the widest collective participation.

A very important step was the creation of a local basis of the project, reached by fostering the aggregation of those human resources that are already operative on the territory and interested in the realization of the project.

After a series of seminars and study tours, active since February 2008, which allowed the comparison between the local group and the operative organizations on a national and international level, as Arte Continua (San Gimignano), Arte Sella (Borgo Valsugana), Arte Fiera (Bologna), Cittadellarte (Biella), the Castle of Rivoli (Rivoli), the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation (Turin), the PAN and the MADRE (Naples), the ArtePollino Association has been created.

This association is chaired by Gaetano Lofrano and is composed of twenty-three persons, who operate and live in the Pollino area and they belong to a large age bracket, including really vast professionalisms and experiences: Pollino's guides, tour operators, restaurant managers, but also professional figures as architets, engineers, geologists and also art lovers, musicians, events' planners. Within the activities of the project and thanks to the support of Basilicata region, the members of the association, who are from the Lucania side of Pollino, have already created a first educational cycle aimed to the contemporary art and the "art in nature" diffusion for the schools of Pollino area, in the April 2008, which involved about twenty teachers and almost two hundred students from four different schools. Currently, the association is actively involved in setting up a programme aimed to the communication, popularization and education, for the 2009, which will develop together with the different stages of the project.