How to Start a Community of Practice Peer Group for Creative Health Practitioners: 7 Proven Tips
Being a creative health practitioner can feel lonely. We work with people all the time, yet we rarely have structured spaces to connect with peers - to share ideas, reflect, and support each other. Setting up a community of practice peer group costs nothing but offers immense benefits. Drawing from my experience as part of a therapeutic creative writing peer group, here are seven practical tips to help you start your own.
Image: My writing peer group brings me constant joy. I especially look forward to our annual self-led writing retreat. Here we are after a weekend of writing in the Somerset Levels last March.
How it all started
For the past five years, I’ve been part of The Copse, a creative writing community of practice group with three wonderful colleagues—Rachel Godfrey, Rachel Hawkins-Crockford, and Victoria Riddiford.
We first met during the Metanoia Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes (CWTP) master’s programme. Wanting to sustain the creativity and connection we had built, we formed our peer group in late 2019.
We were each looking for “a community of practice” and space for “sharing ideas, building a repertoire of activities... and in which to strengthen practice.” What began as a connection through our studies has evolved into a deeply supportive community of learning, reflection, and inspiration.
Benefits of being part of a community of practice peer group
Being part of this peer group has been invaluable to each of us, shaping our practice and sustaining us in ways we never anticipated. The benefits have been profound: ongoing learning and development, problem-solving, mutual support, and the encouragement to celebrate our successes.
It has allowed us to strengthen our identities as facilitators and practitioners. We are each other’s mentors and champions. We’ve learned from each other, shared resources, and supported each other through challenges.
“We share wisdom and stories; we witness and support each other; we take collective joy in seeing new shoots; and fresh leaves unfurl and blaze into autumn colour.”
Our collective wisdom has helped us grow as individuals and as a community connected to the wider landscape of practice.
“We stand together as the Copse. We've weathered many storms together. We've cared for each other, watched each other grow, change, bend, sometimes to a point of breaking. We are strong, adaptable and creative, making the most of every situation we find ourselves in. We are rooted in friendship, in love and respect.”
Proven tips for setting up a Community of Practice Group
There’s no single right way to set up a community of practice. Here are seven essentials that have helped ours thrive over the past five years.
1. Reach Out
Invite people you’d love to collaborate with - you might be surprised by how many say yes!
2. Identify Shared Goals
Clarify what you each want from the group—a safe space to share experiences, exchange ideas, navigate challenges, or develop professionally.
Alongside thinking about why we wanted to meet, we also developed a resource called “The larder” – a shared store cupboard of topics and themes we wanted to explore together.
Our larder serves as a flexible resource, ensuring our meetings remain relevant and purposeful. It includes Equality, Diversity and Inclusion; Managing Boundaries; Menopause and Midlife; Poetic Form; Creativity; Trauma Informed Practice; and Writing from Parts of Self.
Yours might be quite different!
3. Co-create a Manifesto
Establish shared values and intentions for how you will work together.
Early in our journey, when we still saw ourselves as seedlings and before we had grown into a mature copse, we co-created a “Manifesto”, a document expressing the values by which we work and through which we care for and support each other.
The Seedlings Manifesto
Commitment – we strive to protect our meeting times, and to engage wholeheartedly in our sessions
Flexibility – we remain adaptable and responsive to our individual and collective needs
Personal, professional and political – we are friends, colleagues and allies
Challenge – we offer gentle challenge to each other, and we challenge taboos
Safety – we respect and trust one another, and we offer a supportive and encouraging space
Adventure and experimentation – we value curiosity, creativity, courage and new ideas
Balance – we want our sessions to contain laughter, play, care for each other and silence, sometimes
Belonging – we have a proud group identity, and we meet as a group only when we can all meet
Strength in connection – our group relationship fortifies and nourishes us
Intentionality – we strive to act and speak authentically, in accordance with our values and principles
Collaboration – we look for new ways to work together in twos, threes or as a four
Sharing practice – we learn from each other’s experiences, and relish the countless possibilities
Linking theory and practice – we share and respond to articles, models and ideas that intrigue us
The field of CWTP – we raise each other’s awareness of new developments, papers and workshops
Communication – between meetings, we share resources, achievements and challenges
Retreat – we feel the need to spend a whole precious weekend together, once a year
4. Plan a sustainable programme for meetings
Set a realistic meeting rhythm and schedule dates in advance.
Lockdown hit soon after our group formed, and we quickly transitioned into meeting online, taking turns to facilitate writing activities and try out new ideas in a safe supportive environment. Since then, we have developed a structure and rhythm for the year which includes a mix of online and face-to-face meetings as well as a weekend writing retreat.
This meeting structure supports our commitment to the group and enables us to book dates a long way ahead.
5. Create a structure that acts as a safe container
Our meetings follow a consistent structure, inspired by our shared therapeutic writing roots:
Grounding activity
Opening round or check-In
Creative activity structured around a theme or topic
Sharing and discussion arising from the writing
Closing round or check out
The structure creates a safe container, allowing space for creativity and exploration.
6. Stay Flexible
Don’t be afraid to change the way you work to adapt to individual or group needs.
We often review and change the way we meet and what we do, while still honouring the group structure outlined above.
For example, last year we incorporated a season of Action Learning Sets in which we each took a turn to be the focus of a session, supported to explore how we wanted our practice to grow and develop.
These Action Learning sessions helped us “define our practices, acknowledge the differences in what we're each doing, understand each other better, and support our growth in those individual areas.” [Rachel Godfrey]
7. Centre creativity
Whatever the focus of a meeting, creative exploration through writing is always at its heart. This is what makes it meaningful, productive and enjoyable! For us, writing is how we think and express, so it makes sense to ensure that creative writing is always centred. For you, it might be drawing, or movement, or song, or play – or a combination.
This blog article was written by Jane Willis, Creative Health Consultant, Writing Facilitator and Coach, with fellow Copse members: Rachel Godfrey, ELT Author and Writing for Wellbeing Facilitator; Rachel Hawkins-Crockford, Counsellor and Writing for Wellbeing Facilitator; and Victoria Riddiford Counsellor and Writing for Wellbeing Practitioner.
A version of this article was originally published by Lapidus, an international writing for wellbeing membership organisation.
Discover Creative Reflective Writing
Join The Reflective Journal, an online programme designed to nurture connection, creativity, and insight through creative reflective writing. Through four monthly small-group workshops, you’ll:
✅ Pause and reflect in a supportive, trauma-informed space.
✅ Reconnect with your voice, creativity, and inner wisdom.
✅ Gain clarity and feel more equipped to navigate life’s challenges.
✅ Learn practical tools to build a sustainable, rewarding journaling practice.
Ready to begin? Find out more here.
