Centering the Creative:
How GATE Found Its True Mission

When we officially launched GATE at Fox Studios in Los Angeles on June 4, 2009, our intention was clear: to define and name a burgeoning market for a new kind of entertainment—specialized films and other creative works whose purpose reached beyond amusement or distraction. We sought to give shape to a field dedicated to transformation, to offer a framework in which these offerings could grow, evolve, and ultimately thrive.

Yet, as time passed, it became evident that leading with the category itself—rather than the people at its heart—was an unintentional strategic misstep. What we did not fully recognize then was that the true origins of GATE stretched back far earlier, quietly forming across the decades of John’s own artistic and spiritual development.

The earliest seeds were planted in 1967, when John’s passions for music and spirituality found a shared resting place and became intertwined. In 1976, during a meditation teacher training course in Avoriaz, France, John listened to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi speak about the tremendous responsibility and opportunity held by artists. As an artist himself, Maharishi’s words were catalytic—something in John ignited. John began to see, with startling clarity, the potential of art and entertainment to elevate, to awaken, and to serve humanity in meaningful ways.

That fire led John, in 1977, to create Vena Productions—a small company John dedicated to nothing less than “the full development of the entertainer and the entertainment industry.” A few years later, in 1979, while working with actor Ned Beatty on the film ‘1941’, John shared with Ned a vision that had been gaining shape within him: an organization whose purpose was to bring meditation and higher consciousness to the entertainment community. With youthful enthusiasm—and perhaps a touch of idealistic grandeur—John called it “The Council for the Enlightenment of the Entertainment Industry.” Though the name was ambitious, the intention was sincere. These moments, scattered across time, were the early steps leading toward what would eventually become the Global Alliance for Transformational Entertainment.

It became increasingly clear that the true foundation of this emerging field was not the category—it was the Creative Artist. Their inner lives, challenges, aspirations, and evolution were, and are, the wellspring from which transformational work arises. For GATE to be effective, its mission had to begin with them: with recognizing their needs, supporting their development, and empowering their capacity to influence the world through their craft.

Our vision statement ultimately came to reflect this deeper understanding:

“Creative Artists, United, in Transforming the World by Transforming Entertainment, Arts and Media… From Within.”

Following the principle that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, we came to see that the category itself would naturally emerge—organically, authentically—once transformational creative works demonstrated their viability in the marketplace, and once distribution pathways and economic models matured to support them. Only then would the field coherently define itself, built from the inside out by the Creative Artists whose growth, courage, and consciousness make transformational entertainment possible.