Why leadership diversity requires widening the base, not just fixing the top

Haley Edwards is Head of Creative Enterprise at Creative UK.

The screen sector has made genuine progress in widening access and early participation, but there is still a long way to go. Evidence in our new report, Leadership Diversity in the Screen Sector shows that diversity is strongest at the start of the pipeline: women hold 55% of entry‑level roles and Black and Global Majority nearly a quarter (23%)¹. Yet this progress is not translating into leadership at scale.

As careers advance, representation falls away sharply to 41% for women and just 12% for Black and Global Majority talent, revealing that while access has improved, progression has not kept pace. The result is a sector where diverse creatives are getting in, but too many are struggling to survive long enough to become leaders and founders.

This pattern is not unique to screen. Creative UK’s Leadership Diversity in the Creative & Cultural Industries report, published last year, shows that the same gaps persist across the creative industries sector, with women, people from Black and Global Majority and working-class backgrounds, and disabled people all significantly underrepresented in leadership roles. In many cases, representation falls well below wider UK workforce levels, for example, while Black and Global Majority make up 16% of the UK workforce, they account for just under 10% of managers and directors across the cultural sector.

For far too many people from underrepresented backgrounds, there is a missing development bridge between early promise and sustainable leadership. Without that bridge, promising startup companies fail early, and the sector ends up drawing its leaders from an ever-narrower pool. The result is felt beyond representation alone: fewer voices shaping decisions, fewer perspectives at higher levels of decision-making, and ultimately fewer of the ideas that fuel growth across the sector.

This is particularly acute in the screen industries because of their structure. Many future leaders in this industry are not aiming to climb corporate ladders. They are building companies or developing portfolios from scratch. But the reality is stark: according to Office for National Statistics, a large proportion (over 60%) of early‑stage businesses do not survive their first five years. When companies fail early, leadership potential disappears with them.

Over more than seven years of running Creative Enterprise and delivering tailored business programmes for over 700 screen companies, we have seen this pattern play out in practice. While early‑stage programmes attract diverse founders and creatives, far fewer from those groups make it through to growth‑stage support. When it comes to scaling businesses and taking on leadership roles, the diversity visible at the start of the pipeline is no longer reflected.

Too many founders fall away in the early years, before they have the chance to build sustainable companies or step into senior leadership. The issue is not a lack of access or ambition. It is that the ecosystem does not support enough people, deeply enough, for long enough to turn early potential into lasting leadership.

That is the gap Creative Enterprise’s new Screen Launchpad programme is designed to address.

Screen Launchpad is our largest intervention to date, supporting a cohort of 40 early‑stage and pre‑start‑up founders from under-represented backgrounds, including those who have not yet formally set up a company. We focus on the moment when leadership potential is most vulnerable, helping more founders stay in the ecosystem long enough to grow, scale, and lead.

This is the approach we have been developing over several years. We know that short‑term interventions are not enough, which is why our programmes focus on sustained one‑to‑one mentoring, close access to our team, and peer networks that create ongoing support and accountability. By combining all of these factors, we aim to help founders navigate the most difficult early stages to build lasting and scalable businesses within the screen sector.

If the sector wants a wider, more representative generation of leaders, this is where the work has to begin. You cannot build diverse leadership on a narrow, fragile base. Widening that base and supporting more founders, earlier and for longer is the only way to change outcomes. Screen Launchpad is our commitment to doing just that.

Applications for this year’s edition of Screen Launchpad are now open. Find out more here: https://creativeenterprise.wearecreative.uk/screen-launchpad

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¹ These figures are drawn from ScreenSkills’ 2024 workforce research, one of the only sources providing directly comparable data across entry‑level, mid‑level and leadership roles in the UK screen sector, as cited in Leadership Diversity in the Screen Sector (Creative UK, 2026), pp. 9–10.

Leadership Diversity in the Screen Sector is a Creative UK report that brings together data from across film, TV, games and the wider screen industries to benchmark leadership diversity.

It provides the most comprehensive snapshot to date of who leads the sector, revealing persistent underrepresentation across gender, ethnicity, disability and socio‑economic background, and setting out a clear case for change.

Download Report Here --> https://creativeenterprise.wearecreative.uk/leadership-diversity-in-the-screen-sector