One of the weird things about creativity is that it is recognised after it happens. Where does creativity come from? Where was the Mona Lisa before she was painted?

There are other important questions. Do you personally have creative potential? What can you do to bring your creativity into reality? What can teachers do? What can the government do?

The weight of our history has made it difficult to understand creativity. We are deeply conditioned to the idea of cause and effect. ‘One thing leads to another’. ‘The whole is the sum of its parts.’ In a day-to-day practical sense these ideas help to keep us from bumping into each other and they are okay as long as you don’t let them take over your life. The fact is that everything is happening at once and life is messy.

If you want to develop your creativity the challenge is to embrace the mess and view it in new ways. It doesn’t mean that you should start driving on the wrong side of the road, although road rules are an interesting example of linear thinking. Why do we have ‘sides’ of the road? Why do we tolerate road accidents which kill more people than all the terrorist activity on the planet? Why do we tolerate the massive use of fuels which generate waste that is in turn endangering our planet? The answers are implicit in the mess and the first steps to finding them are the awareness that something is wrong and the faith/belief/hope that we can take action.

When Leonardo started painting the Mona Lisa he faced a blank canvas and that is a much easier situation than looking at the terribly messy story of transportation. Yet the underlying process of creativity is the same. Leonardo wanted to find the answer to a ‘problem’ and he had faith that he could make it happen. He came with a sophisticated set of skills and a certain history that enabled him to work with a particular model and perform the mysterious art of ‘painting’.

Part of the mystery can loosely be called ‘play’. The Mona Lisa painting has some quirky elements, including the elusive smile, which weren’t achieved by following the equivalent of a set of road rules. I suggest she already existed as a possibility and Leonardo came along with the right set of ingredients to bring her into our day-to-day world.

If governments want more creative outcomes that are up there with Lisa then the answer is to establish conditions that favour our Leonardo dimension. Awareness, belief, skills and play are a good start. Another thing is that these things are both individual and collective. Without the right community circumstances creativity is like Leonardo’s helicopter – it couldn’t get off the drawing board because there wasn’t any way to make it happen.

And what about you? Should the government invest in you? The short answer is yes, because you are part of the big creative landscape. Maybe you will produce a body of fabulous work – who knows? What is far more likely is that your creativity will grow and influence the way you relate to yourself and the world. It will help you to build your own sense of meaning and it will prepare you, if the chance arises, to make great things visible.