Today, we are on the cusp of an unprecedented opportunity.

Powerful social and technological changes

mean that we can realistically commit to the aspiration

that everyone be able to live a creative life.

What do I mean by a "creative life"?

It's a life that feels meaningful, fulfilled,

where we're free to express ourselves as individuals,

we have access to the power and resources to shape our own future,

we can make our unique contribution to the world.

People hear the word creative

and think, "That's about art, culture or invention.

"I don't have that kind of talent."

But creativity is in all of us.

The artist Ai Weiwei called creativity The Power to Act.

So, let's think about the creative life in this way -

everyone having the skills, confidence and opportunity

to make their ideas a reality.

Whether that idea is a performance, a product, a service, a business,

even a social movement.

So why do I think that we might have reached a moment

where this kind of creativity can flourish as never before?

Several forces are coming together to make this possible.

First of all, there's the growing appetite and demand for creativity.

Across the world, a better educated, more mobile, more questioning population

is seeking out and discovering new routes to self-expression,

collaboration, enterprise.

And thanks to the power of the social web,

people just about everywhere are creating and connecting in a host of new ways.

The internet has the potential

to be the most powerful accelerator of creativity in human history.

And it's clear we urgently need this creative power.

The world is facing big challenges -

problems like caring for an ageing population,

tackling growing inequality, responding to climate change.

It will take our combined creativity

to find the breakthrough solutions we need.

Understand, creativity isn't just about the individual.

Our lives are only possible because of those around us.

And so it's not just people who can be creative.

It's organisation, it's places, it's societies.

But there's another side to this story -

the barriers that stand in the way

of achieving the goal of creative lives for all.

These include those employers and educators who draw too distinct a line

between those they deem "creative people" and "creative tasks", and the rest,

shutting down opportunities to engage and develop us all to our full potential.

We need to address the way our institutions behave,

the way they treat people and the way our government is run.

Leaders have to think differently about how they motivate and mobilise.

Lasting social progress only comes about

when governments work in partnership with communities,

drawing on the creative capacities of all citizens,

recognising them, not as bundles of need,

but as huge, untapped assets.

Instead of seeing social engagement as an optional add-on to government policy,

we should see that policy only really works

when people themselves have chosen to be change-makers.

We need to make sure that assets like finance, intellectual property, networks

are not just hoarded by the few,

but made available as resources for a truly creative society.

Looking back in history, we can see that from Aristotle...

to the Victorians... still persisting today,

writers and thinkers with an ambitious idea of the good life,

they've also tended to be elitists,

assuming that such an ideal is beyond the capabilities of the masses.

But all human beings can be the authors of their own lives.

We are all born with the muscles for creativity,

muscles that grow with the exercise of self-determination.

This is what we call the power to create.