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groups, learn the expectations of the culture and society in which we grow, its beliefs and ideologies, its politics and economics, etc.

If we're lucky, we find people who encourage our enquiry, giving us even greater scope for learning, experiment, and practice. If we're lucky.

Which takes us to the third element, the creative environment in which we find ourselves. Creativity takes place within the individual's mind, but that mind does not exist in a vacuum. We learn the language of our environment - I speak English with a Scottish accent.

We learn what our environments will tolerate - in some societies that means absolute compliance with the ruling ideology and belief systems. It might be the society as a whole, it might be your family, your peer group, your school, your job. Show any sign of originality, independence, or even doubt, some will coerce you back into compliance, others will encourage you.

If we are fortunate enough to move in environments which tolerate our imagination and spirit of enquiry, our creative skills develop. As a Probation Officer, I worked in one city where my managers actively encouraged me to come up with new ideas. I worked in another city, supposedly doing an identical job, where managers rigorously silenced any questions I raised. Guess where I was happier? Guess where I did better work?

Of course, if the creative process works, the result is the creation of something new. This should not be seen as 'the end product'. The fact that you produce something creative is a stimulant, it provides feedback, it acts as a reward to encourage you to do it again.

As a child, you build your first wall of toy bricks. You learn how to do it, you build another, a bigger, taller, more complex wall. Success breeds success - it's a form of exercise. Soon, you're building castles.

So where do my ideas come from? From the process I've just elaborated. The creative individual seeks out new experiences, embraces challenges - even if only in the mind. You seek out experiences and people and environments and ideas which stimulate and stretch you.

You exercise your imagination by asking questions. Why? How? What if? You don't accept the obvious or the given, you wonder if there is an alternative.

With practice, and with growing confidence, you can look at a situation and build a story from it. You see two people in a car. You speculate on who they are, what they are doing, why they are there. Soon you have a whole history for these two people, a whole world

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