Donna Frost

Philosophical foundations and methodological principles 73 3 circumstances and relations of their lives. People are helped to flourish (i.e. grow, develop, thrive) during the change experience in addition to an intended outcome of well-being for the beneficiaries of the work. Flourishing is supported through contemporary facilitation strategies, connecting with beauty and nature and blending with ancient, indigenous and spiritual traditions (cf. Senge, Scharmer, Jaworski & Flowers, 2005 ) and active learning (Dewing, 2008 ). (Titchen & McCormack, 2010 , p. 532 , references in original) Critical creativity pays explicit attention to the creative work that is necessary before transformations of understanding or practices can occur. Its genesis and ongoing development are rooted and nourished within collaborative research and emancipatory practice development work and it foregrounds human flourishing as a goal of research and facilitation activities within the sphere of human interest. Titchen and McCormack ( 2010 ) place human flourishing at the heart of the framework, in fact, and describe three inter-related conditions that need to be met if people are to ‘fulfil their own potential for flourishing’ (p. 542 ). The conditions are ‘Stillness in a landscape’, ‘Becoming the landscape’ and ‘Nurturing, flowing, connecting’ (Titchen et al., 2011 , p. 9 ). Stillness in the landscape refers to preparing, holding and being in the research (or practice development) space, being aware of and moving with the various rhythms within it and enabling others to enter into and be in this space as well. In becoming the landscape (in Titchen and McCormack ( 2010 , p. 542 ) referred to as, ‘Becoming the rock’) the researcher embodies the ‘landscape’, or principles, of critical creativity and is able to internalise and enact those and the other theories and principles which guide him or her. Nurturing, flowing and connecting refer to the principles, assumptions and understandings of the researcher becoming a way of being and, furthermore, being articulated as such. The researcher sees the connections and exchange of insights between transformations of understanding and meaning, within the hermeneutic tradition, and transformations of practices, behaviour and circumstances, within the critical emancipatory tradition. The researcher is thus engaged in a critical creative praxis and able to make this process accessible to others. The intent of this research was to investigate professional artistry collaboratively with nurses. Critical creativity opened up possibilities for studying something as