Prompted by the prevalence of discourses surrounding the need to cultivate creativity for the benefit of wider society and for children themselves, this study aims to explore how creativity is fostered in young children aged 3 to 4. The study recognises that the cultivation of creativity in young children is indivisible from the social ecology in which they are located: it is subject to a network of influences, from the cultural to the local. By inquiring into these influences, it creates an account of how they interact to shape a national approach to early years education and the fostering of children's creativity within it. Using the concept of story as a model, this study has adopted a narrative-style methodological approach in order to look at the phenomenon in a holistic manner. For this purpose, the approach combined documentary analysis with interviews, reflective stories, observations, walking tours and map-making with children and early years practitioners. Beyond this, it compares the educational system of England with Catalonia in order to look beyond more popularly researched national systems of early years education and to use the comparison as a lens to help identify the dominant influences on the cultivation of creativity of children in a national approach to early years education. The study particularly highlights the effects of history, cultural values, policy and practice on the fostering of individual children's creativity in early years settings, extending understanding of this process beyond the confines of classroom and curriculum.