The artist teacher project set out to facilitate trainee teachers’ creative practice and inform their critical pedagogy in the classroom. The approach outlined in this article encouraged them to consider predictable and formulaic practice, and to question, reflect upon and challenge orthodoxies in their teaching of art, craft and design. They critically appraised their practice within a community of reflective practitioners in critical presentations, and in their reflective writing, and discussed and debated the contradictory positions between what they explored in their individual practices as artists and that experienced in the classroom. This project highlighted how fundamental the critical presentations were because the peer‐review, feedback and support, facilitated dialogue in a creative, dynamic space and community of practice. These ‘crits’ also became a forum for airing frustrations and trying to come to terms with the re‐emergence of their artist identities while at the same time, having to suppress many of their convictions and ideals in order to conform to what they found on school placement.