The project described in this report – Core Portfolio and Artistic Mentoring (hereafter referred to as the CPAM project) – was a research programme run by students and artistic mentors under the supervision of CEMPE at the Norwegian Academy of Music in 2018–2020.

Launched in 2018, CPAM was one of the biggest projects in CEMPE’s second period as a Centre of Excellence in Music Performance Education. It sought to explore models and tools to help meet a growing need in music education linked to developing robust and sustainable musicianship in the modern era. The CPAM project was also given a mandate by the NMH to investigate specific digital portfolio platforms for student reflection and development.

The objective of the project was to strengthen the students’ awareness of and insight into their development process over the course of their studies while also underpinning the broader artistic process of building an individual musical practice. The students used a digital portfolio (core portfolio), trialled a range of reflection tools and attended a variety of mentoring sessions. A total of 20 students and five mentors participated in the first project module. The second project module involved 40 students and ten mentors. Most of the students enrolled in the project on a voluntary basis in response to a call for applications and represented most of the study programmes at the NMH. The first project module was overseen by Ingfrid Breie Nyhus and CEMPE’s two student partners Guoste Tamulynaite and Guro Utne Salvesen. Tanja Orning joined the project management team for the second module.

The first project module – Core Portfolio as a Tool for Reflection – focused on strengthening the students’ ownership of their personal process and on making the best possible use of their time at the academy in line with their individual goals, resources and interests. The investigation was carried out with the help of a portfolio (core portfolio). Work on the portfolio was informed by three different forums: mentoring sessions, student groups and an elective course. Reflection on the study process and personal development was linked to four keywords: review, retrospection, outlook and introspection. The findings from the first project module set the agenda for the design of the second module.

The second project module – Core Portfolio and Artistic Mentoring – focused on strengthening the music students’ broader long-term artistic process through practice-based reflection. The emphasis here was on artistic mentoring sessions, and work went into strengthening the students’ awareness of development, opportunities and correlations in the context of their musicianship; reflecting on choices and values in relation to artistic identity; and strengthening the contextual understanding of their musical practice. A training course for project mentors was held in order to develop the pedagogical skills needed to apply various reflective practice models for artistic processes.

The main finding from the CPAM project is the need for a heightened focus on the broader artistic process in music education. Music students benefit from carrying out semester reviews in order to gain an insight into their personal development and set structured goals for their studies. Reflective practice related to artistic development and building a musical identity, meanwhile, requires long-term in-depth investigation. Regular mentoring sessions and reflective exercises can help support this process. The interactions between students and mentors yielded very positive outcomes. Our findings show that music students can benefit from having an individual artistic mentor as a complement to their main instrument teacher, the two forming a bigger team around the student. We often see how main instrument teachers primarily serve as guardians of instrument and tradition-based practices and development, while the students themselves could benefit from guidance from an external resource in the broader process of establishing an individual, sustainable musical practice. Artistic mentoring revolves around the student’s overall artistic development and their preparations for professional practice in a rapidly changing music industry.

In the past few decades we have seen a paradigm shift in higher education, moving away from a tuition-based model towards student-centred learning, i.e. “from teaching to learning” (Gies & Sætre, (eds.), 2019). Student-centred learning now forms the basis for the standards adopted by NOKUT and the European Higher Education Area for quality in education (ESG). One key objective set out in the NMH strategy for 2015–2025 is “Students in the forefront”: “The students should take the lead and identify goals for their own development. We should stimulate the development of artistic identity and critical reflection.” The proliferation of artistic research has created greater awareness and acknowledgement of the artist’s own knowledge, and the discourse on higher music education has given rise to a new kind of artist who requires awareness, competence and an ability to change in step with wider society. The past few decades have also seen the music industry undergo a major transformation, the emergence of a globalised and highly diverse reality, and the arrival of streaming services. The reality gap between education and work has resulted in a heightened focus on the numerous potential career paths available to musicians. Entrepreneurship has made its way into the higher music education curriculum in response to demands for the institutions to better reflect society and the need for students to acquire relevant work skills. The article Musicians as “Makers in Society” (Gaunt et al., 2021) from the AEC project Strengthening Music in Society calls for action in higher music education in order to bring about change: rather than musicians simply being creators in and for society, we must also train musicians to become creators of society. The article describes a three-part model where “need and potential in society”, “musical craft and artistry” and “musicians' visions and identities” are of equal importance and intertwined. Critical thinking and reflexivity are held up as key to music students’ professional development.

Statistics and research show that most of today’s music students are preparing to become what we could call portfolio musicians (Hallam & Gaunt, 2012; Bennett, 2008; Myles Beeching, 2010) or project-makers (Røyseng, Stavrum, Vinge, J. (eds.), 2022). As music professionals, their work will comprise a variety of own projects, involvement in other people’s projects, freelancing and part-time work. Most of them will also be doing a certain amount of teaching. For many of them the overall nature of their work will vary from year to year. This kind of employment requires constant reflection on choices, directions and new opportunities. An artistic identity is not a static quantity but continually evolves as the musician develops and gains more experience and interacts with an ever-evolving music industry. To support music students on their road to becoming robust and flexible performers and makers, there is broad consensus that music education must prompt and challenge the students’ thinking around artistic and musical choices. An artistic research-based education should place emphasis on reflective and exploratory activity. The students’ capacity for independent artistic decision-making is important, as is their ability to identify correlations and challenges and respond creatively to them (Nyhus & Gundersen, 2021; Nyhus, 2023).

The CPAM project's emphasis on student reflection involved an investigation into artistic mentoring as a pedagogical method. According to Sidsel Tveiten, mentoring is an “enabling process designed to strengthen attainment skills through dialogue based on knowledge and humanistic values” (Tveiten, 2006). Peter Renshaw writes that mentoring is “aimed at sharing knowledge and encouraging individual development. It has a longer-term focus designed to foster personal growth and to help an individual place their artistic, personal and professional development in a wider cultural, social and educational context” (Renshaw, 2009). In music education, where the master tradition has remained strong, mentoring and conversation taking place away from a performance situation can help shape an approach more centred around the student’s own agency. Gerald Jones describes the three pedagogical approaches gatekeeper, midwife and fellow traveller (Jones, 2005). The gatekeeper aligns with the material being taught, demonstrates, instructs and gives examples. A midwife steps back from the centre of the learning and facilitates organisation and thought experiments by asking questions, while a fellow traveller aligns with the student and takes part in discussion, exploration and reflexivity.

Another of CEMPE’s focus areas – group and collaborative learning – has guided the work on the CPAM project. Collaborative models have been suggested as a way of supporting, enriching and expanding the master tradition (Hanken, 2015; Gaunt & Westerlund (eds.), 2013; Gies & Sætre (eds.), 2019). The sense of belonging to a team can promote performance, and discovering different perspectives can be important in underpinning critical awareness and decision-making.

How can a digital portfolio (core portfolio) act as a tool for reflection and artistic development for music students?

How can artistic mentors serve as a complement to main instrument teachers in developing the students’ musicianship?

How can portfolio work and artistic mentoring contribute to an holistic music education that reinforces the students’ resilience as they prepare to become professional musicians?

The methodology used to answer these questions was qualitative group interviews and written interviews. Some of the group interviews in the second project module took place during the pandemic and were conducted via Zoom. The group interviews and the teachers’ group conversations were transcribed. As the two project managers were also participating mentors, the project can be viewed in light of the action research tradition. Perspectives from action research are frequently used in practice-based research. The researchers are themselves engaged in the field being researched, so the research cannot be considered objective or value-free. The method involves a process of trialling, reflection and knowledge acquisition with a view to developing and improving practice (Schwandt, 2001). It is a cyclical method in that the practice – the action – should give rise to progression and change which can in turn improve the practice. With this method, the questions and the reflection are therefore as important as the research results, and the reflection and experiments are mutually dependent and equitable. The motivation behind the CPAM project was the lack of tuition and guidance when it comes to reflection and artistic development as expressed by both students and teachers. On that basis, the project was carried out with the different project modules being evaluated after each stage. The knowledge and learning were then incorporated into the next module (Ulvik, Riese & Roness, 2016). Nyhus and Orning are both professional performers trained at the Norwegian Academy of Music. They hold PhDs in artistic research and performance practice respectively. Their knowledge of and involvement in the field in question therefore provide multiple benefits in that they are insiders, although this also poses a risk of blind zones and a lack of distance. The researchers have done their utmost to reflect on their own presence and role in the project along the way.

Every informant signed a consent form, and the project was registered with the Norwegian Centre for Research Data. We have edited information from the interviews which can be used to identify individuals.

First project module

In the 2018–2019 academic year CEMPE launched a pilot project involving a digital portfolio referred to as a “core portfolio”. Some 20 students from different specialisms and cohorts at the NMH helped trial the portfolio. The pilot was instigated by Ingfrid Breie, deputy director of CEMPE, along with the centre’s two student partners, Guoste Tamulynaite and Guro Utne Salvesen. The student partners wanted to use their roles at CEMPE to shine the spotlight on reflection and artistic development on the performance programmes and were deeply involved in the design of the project. Three different methods were trialled to initiate and monitor the portfolio process: a) having a personal mentor meet the student for two sessions, b) having groups of students meet twice in the presence of a mentor, and c) asking teachers on elective courses to serve as mentors.

Second project module

The project was expanded in the following academic year (2019–2020). Findings from the first project module showed that the method with a personal mentor had the greatest potential for further investigation and development. Feedback from students and mentors indicated that they would like to see more frequent meetings. We also wanted to place further emphasis on reflection and artistic development, and we saw a need to create a more coherent framework and programme for the mentors. That year the project was extended to include 40 students, and Tanja Orning joined as project manager alongside Nyhus, Utne Salvesen and Tamulynaite. The participating students were to meet their artistic mentor five times over the course of the year, and work on their portfolio would take place during and in between these meetings. The artistic mentors completed a course on artistic process mentoring and were presented with a programme that would inform the five meetings with their respective students.

The input from the student partners, Guoste Tamulynaite and Guro Utne Salvesen, was highly valuable. The fact that all of the students were able to meet the student partners at an early stage allowed the project to be thoroughly institutionalised, and their attentive involvement during the project helped ensure good communication with the participating students. The student partners also interviewed the students, something we believe engendered trust and transparency as they shared their experiences.