The facilitator’s responsibilities are numerous. He or she should guide the participants back and forth between the different steps, “translate” when things are unclear or there are misunderstandings, help the participants stay within the CRP framework, and predict strategies for engaging in meaningful dialogues. This requires communication skills and professional insights.

It is important to go into detail and create processes that touch upon important aspects; you do not want a process that serves as a “pat on the back” where everything is rosy and no progress is made. When going into detail, the processes can move in less desirable directions, however. In classical principal instrument tuition there is much focus on making changes, corrections and perfecting skills. Both teachers and students have been trained to receive or offer suggestions for change at any time. It is such an ingrained part of the culture that when engaging in CRP you have to practise not being so direct and explicit in your feedback. Taking a step back, allowing for different opportunities and acknowledging that all the participants in the process can contribute to the artist’s development are at the heart of this method. The facilitator’s key responsibilities in this context are therefore to ensure that the focus is always on the artist and that the feedback, questions and suggestions being offered are presented in a dialogic form. As facilitator I had to practise how to foresee where a statement or question would lead before adjusting, gently guiding or interrupting. Since everyone, the responders included, must be met with respect, I had to acquire a diplomatic persona that made everyone feel valuable in the process.

Because the open and neutral questions are so central to CRP, I spent a great deal of time both during and outside the seminars practising how to identify the differences between closed and open questions. I had to rehearse how to detect what was behind a question, whether it was a criticism, a personal agenda or “hobby horse”, or whether it was down to right/wrong thinking. As facilitator I practised how to help the responders formulate their questions. I had to understand the thoughts behind the questions and give them a form that benefited the process.

The professional insight I have gained as a performer and teacher means that I possess knowledge that helps identify solutions to various problems. I often felt the urge to contribute with my own solutions. The students were proactive and provided good input, but occasionally they would struggle to articulate good questions or to pick up on questions that I deemed to be essential. They might scratch the surface, or they might appear to skirt certain issues. In these situations I had to “have a discussion” with myself. These discussions could be about whether I, as the facilitator, should guide them towards topics that I felt were relevant or important. They could also be about whether I should formulate questions for the responders and artist in order to initiate processes that would move them along in the dialogue. Sometimes I successfully guided them without being explicit about where I – in light of my specialist expertise – wanted them to go. This made the processes meet the objective of allowing the artist in collaboration with the responders to make new discoveries and get enough motivation to explore the issue further. Other times I became too eager and direct and stepped out of the facilitator role and into the singer/teacher role. Since the group dynamic was good and we had established a platform of equality, I would find that the students were correcting me. They pointed out that I was being unclear in the facilitator role and that the equality that the process was built on had broken down. When I exercised my professional role in this way, we crossed over into a masterclass tradition that is less appropriate for CRP. I appreciated their honest feedback, and my own reflections afterwards have also helped make me clearer about my roles when teaching: whether I am a problem-solver or whether I should be working with the students to explore issues in other ways.

In the vocal teaching tradition that I was trained in it was largely up to the teacher to offer solutions and stake out a course for the student’s technical and musical development. Teachers are protectors of a tradition that the student should be introduced to and inducted into. Although the teaching culture in Norway is less authoritarian than in many other countries in the world, it still involves a tacit “contract” which stipulates that the students should take in the instructions they are given, and work on them before potentially asking questions about how to go about it. This mindset was, and partly continues to be, a part of my teaching. The students do not always know what they need to learn, where they are going, or how they are going to get there. However, taking on the facilitator role in a group project like this, has challenged and broadened my perspective on how I can apply my expertise as a vocal teacher. I felt frustrated at not being able to offer solutions while acting as a facilitator, even though these solutions were so obvious to me. My task was to let the students step up and to use my expertise in ways that allowed them to articulate the feedback, be it questions or opinions. I became aware that I do not always take the time to investigate what they want to get out of their singing lesson or to ask the students how they perceive my instructions. I became more conscious that I have a tendency to talk too much, and I realised that I often asked too many and too complex questions at the same time. This project has made it clearer to me when questions and dialogue can be more effective than instructive tuition, and there is now more breadth and variation in my methods and approaches.