20 years of SpeedAdmin, and a morning spent looking forward
What will music and arts schools need in the years ahead? At our 20th Anniversary Seminar in Sønderborg, voices from across the Nordic sector explored technology, participation, data and leadership, and what may be too valuable to change.
- Technology creates value when it strengthens relationships and teaching, not when it replaces them.
- Data is only useful if it changes what you do.
- Innovation can be as small as saving a few minutes on a task you repeat hundreds of times.
When we gathered customers, colleagues and guests in Sønderborg on 25 August, we could have spent the morning looking back on 20 years of SpeedAdmin. We chose to spend surprisingly little time on the past.
Instead, the theme was Music and Art Schools in Transition.
After a welcome from SpeedAdmin founders Torben and Karsten, and a musical opening by Mette Rasmussen from Det Sønderjyske Sangcenter, the morning moved through perspectives from Norway and Sweden, technology, data and leadership. It ended in an open conversation between the speakers and the audience.
The starting point was simple. Music and arts education is changing. So are technology, young people, and the expectations of parents, teachers, administrators and public institutions. Where does that leave the music and arts school?
We didn't expect to find one answer, and we didn't. But we did find some very good questions.
Norway: where young people spend their spare time
One of the numbers that stayed with us came from Jens Nyland of Norsk kulturskoleråd.
In Norway, around 10% of children and young people take part in organised cultural activities in their spare time, including schools of arts. At the same time, 86% are gaming. Socio-economic background also has a significant influence on who takes part.
It would be easy to turn that into another discussion about screen time. Jens's point was more interesting. If this is where a large part of young people's culture, creativity and social life already takes place, what can arts education learn from it?
The Norwegian response is not to move traditional teaching onto a screen. Jens showed examples of arts schools taking a more active role in community development, Oslo's work with technology-based disciplines and video games, and the national MishMash Centre for AI and Creativity, where arts education is part of the conversation about new technology rather than standing outside it.
Technology is not necessarily the answer. But ignoring how technology is changing culture probably isn't one either.
Sweden: local freedom and equal access
Torgny Sandgren, Secretary General of Kulturskolerådet in Sweden, brought a different system but some remarkably familiar questions.
Sweden has almost 290 local municipal arts school operations instead of one national model. Local responsibility has created diversity, innovation and strong ownership. It also means that a child's opportunities can depend heavily on geography and local priorities.
Torgny's question to the room was a difficult one: How do we combine local responsibility with equal opportunities for all children?
Swedish arts schools face three pressures at once:
- Unequal access between municipalities
- Economic pressure on municipal budgets
- A broader mission, reaching beyond traditional arts education towards new art forms, collaboration and wider participation
One response has been more cooperation between municipalities. Another has been digital teaching. In a Swedish distance teaching pilot, the starting point was pedagogy, not technology. Existing tools were used, and digital lessons complemented local activities instead of replacing them. Students got access to expertise that wasn't available locally.
"Technology creates value when it strengthens relationships and pedagogy, not when it replaces them."
That thought would return later in the day.
RFID and instrument management, demonstrated with ice cream
After a lot of policy, demographics, financing and structural challenges, it was time for what the programme called a "sorbet from the young generation". That turned out to be quite literal.
SpeedAdmin developer Niklas Braun took us through the history and possibilities of RFID technology, with help from the audience and the ice creams they had just been served.
RFID uses small tags that can be read wirelessly. Instead of scanning or typing in every item, a reader picks up tagged objects nearby, sometimes several at once.
Behind the fun was a very practical idea. What if registering an instrument, finding out who has it, or taking stock of an equipment room didn't require lists, spreadsheets and manual typing? What if tasks that take a few minutes each could take seconds?
Niklas showed how RFID can be used for instrument and inventory management, including registering equipment just by walking through a room instead of handling every item.
It was a useful change of perspective. Digitalisation doesn't have to mean a large transformation project or an AI strategy.
Sometimes innovation is simply removing a small piece of friction that is repeated hundreds of times.
Denmark: using data to make better decisions
Søren Friis Møller opened with three questions that sound simple but aren't. What do we actually know about our sector? What might we be overlooking? And how can better use of data help us make stronger decisions and show our impact?
In Denmark, around 64,000 pupils are individually registered in music and culture schools, and many more are reached through collaborations and shorter activities. Even including those, a large share of children and young people are still outside the sector's reach.
Those young people aren't short of other things competing for their attention. Søren pointed to children spending around two hours and forty minutes a day on social media. He argued that cultural participation is closely linked to identity: young people are constantly deciding where they belong and what they want to be part of. That makes knowing your audience rather important.
But his message wasn't "collect more data". One of his most useful pieces of advice was the opposite.
"Don't drown in the data lake."
Instead, he suggested five steps:
Above all, move beyond saying "we know it works". A stronger question is:
"For whom does it work, in what way, and how do we know?"
Music and arts schools are increasingly asked to show their wider contribution to education, wellbeing, inclusion and communities. For them, that difference matters.
Panel: what technology should not replace
By the time Jens, Torgny and Søren sat down for the final panel, a traditional panel with the audience politely watching felt wrong. So it became a fireside conversation, and the audience quickly joined in.
The discussion covered technology and AI, teacher recruitment, resources, access, financing and young people's changing expectations. One of the most interesting threads was about what should not change.
Someone raised the importance of the physical environment. Welcoming buildings, places where young people enjoy spending time, and schools that feel accessible can matter as much as another digital solution.
We kept coming back to something very distinctive about music education: the relationship between one student and a highly specialised teacher. That one-to-one attention can be extraordinarily valuable. It is also resource-intensive.
That creates one of the central dilemmas for the sector: How do we keep what makes music and arts education special, while making high-quality provision financially and practically sustainable?
AI and technology may be part of the answer. So may new teaching formats and more cooperation. But the conversation suggested that progress shouldn't be measured by how much technology we introduce. The better question is whether it helps create more access, stronger relationships, better teaching, and more time for what people do best.
What we took home from Sønderborg
We began the seminar by saying that the people in the room weren't just an audience. Their experiences, disagreements and ideas were part of the programme. That turned out to be true.
Nobody left Sønderborg with a blueprint for the music and arts school of 2035. We left with questions:
- About the children we reach, and the many we don't
- About whether our offers change as quickly as young people's lives
- About the evidence behind the decisions we make
- About where technology adds value, and where human contact can't be replaced
We also left with a reminder that many challenges are shared across the Nordic countries, even when the structures, legislation and funding behind them look very different. That seems like a worthwhile way to celebrate 20 years.
- Which children in our area are we not reaching today, and do we know why?
- Where could technology save our teachers or administrators time every week?
- What do we believe works, and how could we show it?
As we said at the start of the seminar: Don't just sit back and enjoy the concert. You're part of the band.