Donna Frost

Facilitation of the development of professional artistry 241 7 Concluding remarks The facilitation of the development of professional artistry involves supporting, guiding and being with the other on the journey towards its development. Furthermore, it involves creating and holding the spaces in which the journey can occur and helping the other, or each other, to overcome challenges and reach the necessarymilestones. In this chapter themilestones, orperspective transformations, have been identified as coming to understand professional artistry and the potential for professional artistry in our own practice, embodying critical and creative critique, and learning to intentionally flex our professional artistry muscles. The circumstances which were experienced as either hurdles or supportive alternatives had to do with the value the work culture placed on professional artistry, the way in which we understood our own professional artistry and were able to transfer those understandings to new situations, the degree to which we could establish supportive, like-minded communities around us, the degree to which we paid sustained attention to developing our professional artistry and our own values and beliefs about the way in which professional artistry manifested itself in our practice. These processes are embedded in the CCCI design and the lemniscate inquiry process. Becoming able to facilitate the development of professional artistry, therefore, was coming to embody these principles. The strategies we developed and found useful in helping each other to develop our professional artistry have also been presented. The approaches we experienced as useful were also ‘built into’ the research design and included the establishment of a safe community, supportive structures and safe space within practice in which we could learn to experience practice honestly and holistically before learning to deconstruct and reconstruct these experiences, and the presence of a trusting relationship with a facilitator. Various aspects of each of these approaches have been elaborated on in this chapter. The process of coming to understand and develop professional artistry was a process of developing our self-awareness and inner convictions. We needed a safe community in which to do this: a group in which we experienced trust and safety, within which we could honestly examine, deconstruct and reconstruct our practice and, as a result of this collaborative meaning making, feel safe to try out new ways of working and perhaps fall down in the trying. It was helpful when we worked gently with each other and at the same time maintained high standards. Our needs in practice situations were similar. We needed sufficient space and structure in practice situations to learn to experience our practice honestly, not shying away from the aspects we didn’t like or understand, and holistically: with our bodies, perceptions, emotions and