ELIA emerged from a conference organized in Amsterdam in 1990, Imagination and Diversity, aimed to promote cooperation in art education around Europe.

In the same year, a conference in Budapest, in the wake of the fall of the Iron Curtain, opened up vistas for collaboration with Eastern Europe.

In 1996, ELIA was designated to organize a ‘Thematic Network for Higher Arts Education’ as part of the SOCRATES programme.

[5] To this end, ELIA has been cooperating closely with the European Association of Conservatoires (AEC), publishing four position papers together.

In 2015, ELIA launched a 3-year Creative Europe co-funded project NXT Making a Living from the Arts, which ended in April 2018.

The Executive Office, currently residing in Amsterdam, coordinates daily affairs, project manages the events in cooperation with local partners and handles all membership requests and related inquiries.

Through its activities (projects, training programmes, workshops, external peer reviews and accreditation procedures) EQ-Arts supports higher arts education institutions in the self-evaluation and enhancement of their internal quality systems to promote a strong quality culture across the higher arts education sector.

[21] Moreover, it has surveyed the development of innovative MA and PhD programmes, particularly in the field of Artistic Research, which has been the topic of a 2005 conference and 2008 strategy paper.