Thinking Ahead, Part 2: The Gatekeepers
Thinking Ahead is a Horizon Collective editorial series exploring the ideas, tensions, and forces shaping the future of film, video, and creative storytelling.
This is Part 2. If you haven't read Part 1 - The Next Generation of Filmmakers, we'd suggest starting there.
At the end of Part 1, we arrived at a tension. A generation of filmmakers and content creators approaching their craft with a different set of orientations, more fluid in form, more questioning of received hierarchies, more attentive to what storytelling actually does to the people who experience it - exists within an industry whose structures were largely built by, and for, a previous generation's assumptions about how creative work gets made and who gets to make it.
Between that emerging generation and the audiences they could reach stands a layer of decision-makers whose choices shape everything: what gets commissioned, what gets funded, what gets distributed, what gets seen. Gatekeepers. The word carries weight - sometimes the weight of obstruction, sometimes of stewardship. Often, in our experience, both at once.
This piece is not an indictment of gatekeepers. It is an attempt to think honestly about what the role demands, where it falls short of its own stated ideals, and most importantly - what genuinely principled gatekeeping might look like if the industry chose to build toward it.
The Gap That Can be Spoken About Openly
There is a conversation that happens constantly in the film, TV, and creative industry - in panels, in mission statements, in commissioning briefs, in funding criteria, about the importance of new voices, fresh perspectives, creative risk-taking, and the representation of communities and experiences that have historically been absent from the frame.
And then there is a separate conversation, quieter and less visible, about what actually gets greenlit. About whose pitches get returned. About which formats commissioners feel confident defending to their boards. About the subtle gravitational pull, in every creative institution, towards the familiar, the proven format, the bankable name, the story that resembles stories that have already worked.
The gap between these two conversations is not always the product of bad faith. Most people working in commissioning and funding roles in the UK creative industries genuinely believe in the values they articulate. The problem is structural as much as personal, the incentive systems, risk frameworks, and cultural norms of most creative institutions are better designed to manage downside than to enable genuine creative ambition. When stated values and actual decisions diverge, it is often because the system makes it easier to say the right things than to do them.
Intention and outcome are not the same thing. The most important measure of a gatekeeper's values is not what they say in a panel discussion, it is the pattern of decisions they make when the pressure is on and the safe option is available.
Three Principles Worth Taking Seriously
Rather than classifying of what gatekeepers get wrong, we want to offer something more useful: a framework for thinking about what the role demands at its best. Power, principle, responsibility, openness, not as abstract values, but as practical orientations that distinguish gatekeeping that genuinely serves the industry from gatekeeping that merely manages it. Bearing in mind this is just a start...
FIRST PRINCIPLE
Power - and the obligation that comes with it
The power a gatekeeper holds is real and consequential. A commissioning decision is not just a business choice, it is a statement about whose stories matter, whose voice is worth amplifying, whose career trajectory gets accelerated and whose stalls. Gatekeepers who are genuinely good at their role understand this weight and carry it deliberately rather than treating each decision as a purely commercial calculation.
Power in this context also means the power to set norms, to signal, through the pattern of decisions made over time, what the industry values and what it doesn't. Gatekeepers who exercise this power thoughtfully understand that they are not just responding to a market. Not an easy thing to do!
SECOND PRINCIPLE
Principle - alignment between values and decisions
Principled gatekeeping means that the values an institution articulates are legible in the decisions it makes, not just in the easy cases, where supporting a new voice costs nothing, but in the harder ones, where genuine creative risk requires defending against institutional inertia or commercial pressure.
This is where most institutions struggle most visibly. Principle under comfortable conditions is not principle - it is preference. The test of genuine commitment to creative diversity, to new voices, to risk-taking, is what happens when those commitments conflict with the path of least resistance. The most principled gatekeepers we have encountered are those who have thought carefully about this conflict in advance and have a clear account of how they navigate it.
THIRD PRINCIPLE
Openness - as a practice, not a posture
Openness is the principle most frequently claimed and most inconsistently practised. Every institution in the creative industries presents itself as open, to new voices, to unconventional pitches, to work that doesn't fit established formats. The reality of how most commissioning processes actually function tells a more complicated story.
Genuine openness is not a declaration. It is a set of practices, accessible pitching processes, transparent decision criteria, active outreach to underrepresented communities, mentorship structures that develop relationships with emerging talent before they are ready to pitch, and a genuine willingness to sit with work that is unfamiliar without immediately assessing it against the template of what has succeeded before.
Where the Industry Is Getting This Right
It would be dishonest to frame this only as a story of failure. There are commissioners, funders, and institutions within the UK creative industries who are doing this work seriously, who have built processes and relationships that genuinely reflect the values they articulate, and whose track record of decisions demonstrates a sustained commitment to creative principle over commercial comfort.
What distinguishes them, in our observation, is rarely a single structural innovation. It is more often a quality of attention - a genuine curiosity about creative work that exists outside their existing frame of reference, their experience, and a willingness to sit with unfamiliarity long enough to understand what it is offering rather than immediately categorising it as a risk.
It is also, frequently, a quality of relationship. The gatekeepers doing this best tend to have genuine, ongoing connections with the creative communities they serve, not just at the point of commissioning but throughout the development of emerging talent. They are present in conversations that don't have an immediate commercial application. They know who is making interesting work before that work is ready to pitch.
What Better Gatekeeping Makes Possible
The case for better gatekeeping is not only ethical - though it is that. It is also, straightforwardly, creative and commercial.
The work that endures - the films, series, and creative projects that build genuine cultural resonance and lasting commercial value, almost always required someone in a position of institutional power to make a decision that wasn't obviously safe at the time. The history of the UK creative industries is, in large part, a history of commissioning decisions that looked like risks and turned out to be the definition of what was possible.
A gatekeeper who exercises their power with genuine principle, takes their responsibility to makers and audiences seriously, and practises openness as a daily discipline rather than an annual statement of intent is not just a better version of the role. They are a more valuable one to the industry, to the audiences it serves, and to the next generation of filmmakers waiting for someone to open the door.
Which is, ultimately, what Part 1 and Part 2 of this series are really about. The next generation of filmmakers has something to offer. Whether the industry creates the conditions for that offering to reach the people it could reach is not a question about talent. It is a question about the people and institutions who hold the keys.
We think the answer can be yes. We think it is worth working toward.
This concludes the Thinking Ahead series. Part 1: The Next Generation of Filmmakers, is available now on the Horizon Collective blog. We'll be returning to these themes in future editions of the series.
We believe in creative work that is genuinely ambitious, and in the relationships that make it possible.
If you're a brand, a broadcaster, or a creative looking for a partner who thinks as carefully about these questions as you do, we'd love to start a conversation.
