CEMPE has aimed to bring about change in higher music education on a local, national and international level and have succeeded in doing so in a number of areas, as described in the previous sections. For this section, however, we will elaborate on the experienced barriers for change inside an institution for higher music education such as NMH.

CEMPE’s vision was to be a catalyst for change in higher music education, by offering ideas, facilities, project funding, networks and time for research and development work. However, the first barrier to change as a center for excellence in education, was that the centre itself did not have a mandate or authority to directly alter curriculum or structures in higher music education. Therefore, CEMPE has merely contributed to change through exploration, debates, dissemination and funding of projects which could make higher music education more student-centred, more collaborative and more explorative. By our efforts, we have aimed to inspire and facilitate for stakeholders of our host academy and our sister higher music education institutions to undertake structural changes. The success of the center has thus been partly reliant on both how well we managed to communicate ieas and results, and how open, responsive, or interested these stakeholders have been to its contributions.

A second barrier to change is found in the structure of higher music education, with one-to-one instrumental lessons at the core, teachers with great autonomy, and where many performance teachers have small positions without time for R&D. As so much of the tuition is organised individually, changes in this central learning context must essentially occur at the micro level.Thus, CEMPE wisely chose to engage as many performance teachers as possible in the projects on group teaching, coaching and practicing. However, we could not reach all, and throughout CEMPE’s period, it was challenging to get enough performance teachers to involve themselves in pedagogical development projects. Some teachers were open and curious and came to the centre with ideas and projects that they would like to do in their own teaching practice or together with colleagues. Other teachers were interested, and joined in as participants, came to debates and were supportive of the initiatives, while other teachers never came in contact with CEMPE. In the first period, where it was only teachers who led projects, this meant that their students did not get these opportunities either.

At the time, NMH did not have many incentives in place for teachers to spend time on pedagogical development. This changed when the scheme for merit-based educators (no: meritteringsordning) came into place in 2023, premiering staff who prioritise quality development combined with an explorative and collaborative approach to teaching. A key learning point from ten years of CEMPE in this is that if an institution wants their teachers to engage in pedagogical development, there needs to be both incentives, time set off for it in work plans and leaders who encourage and support development projects.

A third barrier to change was met in disagreements about how to prepare students in better ways for a more manifold, competitive, and demanding work market and how to prepare students to contribute in meaningful ways to society. There have been dramatic changes in the music industry during the last decades, while higher music education institutions have struggled to keep in line. New courses and study content have been added, but adding new content leads to the problem of over-worked students and overloaded study plans. Thus, one cannot only add on new courses, one must also develop the existing ones, and revise the totality of the study programmes to achieve a positive change. This is of course work-intensive and cannot be left to a centre for excellence in education itself. As might be expected, there are also diverse opinions among staff and students of what the students need the most - whether it is more advanced performance skills, entrepreneurial competencies, competencies of artistic citizenship, of project leadership or of artistic reflection and experimentation.

A fourth barrier to change is the economy. Through CEMPE, the Norwegian Academy of Music was allocated extra money for ten years to explore, document and disseminate with the premise that projects that were to be continued and integrated after the funding ran out had to be financed by NMH itself. In 2023, CEMPE’s last funding year, the Norwegian Academy of Music, together with the higher education sector at large, was in a difficult financial situation and thus had to cut weeks off from the academic year, administrative positions were cut and new projects were postponed. Extra hours for teacher collaboration, more hours for supervision, or funding for staff development courses was thus difficult to find room for, and the ideas of a centre for artistic and pedagogical development presented to the NMH’s board as a way to continue CEMPE’s activities were also put on hold.

A last barrier to change in higher music education is found in its traditional, democratic structure, with leaders elected amongst staff, a culture that values staff autonomy and where decisions are something all staff members should agree on. Several decades ago, the Norwegian Academy, as many of its sister institutions nationally and internationally, educated classical musicians and music teachers only. Even though there were struggles in the field then as well, the institution's employees were more alike and equal, heading more in the same direction as a totality than today. In the last thirthy years there has been an ongoing expansion and the Norwegian Academy of Music now includes more genres and music traditions, such as jazz, improvisation, folk music, church music, pop, rock and electronic music. It also includes a large music therapy department, studies in conducting and composition, music technology and music theory and even an individual bachelor and master programme, for students that have projects or interests that do not fit the regular programmes. Thus, higher music education today includes an expanding array of differing ideas of how to teach and supervise musicians effectively as well as different ideas of what quality and success look like, and what is valued and treasured. The sum is a larger and more manifold institution, which provides a rich and inspiring community but which also makes management and leadership more demanding. Institutional change will often imply a change in positions and power, and can thus be experienced as a threat by those who fear that their position, their programme, their course or their genre will lose terrain as a result (see Ski-Berg Ph.D-dissertation for elaborations on change processes in higher music education).

NMH of today is thus a diverse institution, where members have varying solutions and agendas, and where there is an ongoing competition for positions and resources, intensified as budgets have tightened. Getting everyone «on board» for the evolving landscape of higher music education is a challenge we share with our sister institutions in Norway and Europe at large. Implementing change in such an environment requires competent and professional leadership equipped with well-thought visions, broad knowledge of today’s music industry and arts society, and sensitivity to the precarious sides of this change. Indeed, for future change processes and significant development projects like IN.TUNE, it will be crucial to maintain strong links between the members involved in the work packages and the institutional management. Additionally, project proposals should include concrete plans for implementing and advancing project results.