Donna Frost

Facilitation of the development of professional artistry 235 7 experimented with giving and receiving feedback with people outside the inquiry via the use of association cards. The kind of feedback given was more personal and insightful than when they had previously emailed each other to ask for ‘tips and tops’, and the process was enjoyable. In this way they turned a compulsory administrative procedure into a chance for mutual learning. These examples illustrate that the learning and transformation that had taken place with respect to facilitating professional artistry began to have an effect on the nurses’ ways of being and were thus visible in many areas of their professional life. Learning to flex our professional artistry muscles: helpful strategies Reaching thismilestone and being able to begin exercising influence in our contexts, had to do with developing a measure of self-awareness and inner conviction with respect to both professional artistry as an idea and in our own practice. It helped us immeasurably to work in a group and to go on this journey together. Not only because we shared similar values with respect to the purpose and value of nursing practice, but because we made various transitions and struggled to reach understanding together. The collaborative unpicking of situations in which we had missed chances and afterwards considering together how we would do it differently another time, sometimes actively trying out alternatives together, was experienced as very helpful. In short, the CCCI groups provided a safe place to learn, to fall down, stand up and try again, and the CCCI lemniscate provided a structure to help us ‘walk the walk’ before we could ‘talk the talk’. The particular strategies that were useful here were: creating community with each other; being accepting of and gentle with self and each other (as people) while having high standards in terms of practice goals / quality of care goals; engaging in critical and creative critique of our own practice and learning to articulate our own professional artistry. The last two strategies, then, dovetail almost seamlessly with the first two milestones and illustrate the means and ends nature of the facilitation of the development of professional artistry. Reaching these milestones was indeed necessary before we could move into developing and flexing our professional artistry muscles. The last two aspects have therefore been explained and illustrated in the sections above. An impression is given below as to how the other two strategies for reaching this third milestone were experienced. The first is a found poem constructed from words spoken during the last meeting of the RNI group.