The aim of this study is to determine how ground-up, small-scale research partnership initiatives can be incorporated and sustained in a school's curriculum. Two problems are explored: First, how can innovations from small-scale partnerships be transformed into large-scale policies? And, second, how do we sustain values cultivated from small-scale partnerships into larger networks? Using classroom observations and narratives of teachers and community musician partners who co-designed a community music-based curriculum with a researcher, this study presents the challenges of diffusing and sustaining partnerships in two schools, primary and secondary, amidst the constraints of the standards-based curriculum in a de/centralized education system.