Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Adnan Arnautlija
Today starts the 24th Golden Drum International Festival of Creativity. As you are reading this interview, Carla Camilla Hjort is preparing for her speech in which she will present „The world and work of Space10“, a future living lab set up in close collaboration with Inter-IKEA-Systems.
Carla by nature is a rebel, so in 2006 she founded her first company, fittingly called ArtRebels, to which she later added Rebel Agency, Trailerpark Festival and Space10. She doesn’t believe in failure, but believes that risks must be taken if you want to succeed.
Read on and have a little taste of what you can expect to hear at her speech today, at 15:30hrs in the Grand Union Hall.
Media Marketing: You are a creative and cultural entrepreneur. What were your first steps in the industry of creativity and what is the ultimate goal of your work?
Carla C: I started as a creative myself – first as a dancer, then as a producer and a dj and I also spend some years in the film industry before starting my first company in 2007.
I decided to start ArtRebels (my first company) wishing to support creative talents realize their full potential and created Scandinavians largest community of creatives as well as an agency to support the business potential of those talents. The ArtRebels agency model was designed to be community driven, which meant and still means that we are a small in-house team of 7 people elevated by the larger community. This gives us an excellent opportunity to design customized teams for each project while maintaining super flexibility. It also keeps our running costs low which has created room for staying rebellious throughout our 11 years of existence.
The ultimate goal for me personally as well as all our companies (today I own 3 companies ArtRebels, Made in Space festival + SPACE10) is to design for positive social impact rather than doing marketing and classical advertisement to drive more sales for a client. I personally feel that we, as creatives have a responsibility to help shape the future in a more positive, meaningful and sustainable way. Large companies should also understand that they have a responsibility to lead societal transformation and explore how they can create a bigger impact socially instead of using tons of money on classical advertisement.
Media Marketing: You are a rebel in the industry gripped by fear. Bold solutions are avoided as agencies fear losing clients, and clients fear losing customers. How important is creativity and can the industry overcome all this fear?
Carla C: I actually have a very good approach to avoid fear and that is to not to believe in failure in the first place. If you won’t die from it, it can’t be that bad and then you just need to take the risks, whatever they are. I decided many years ago that I did not want to be driven in any shape or form by fear and if I catch myself doing it I immediately have to challenge myself. Whenever we “fail” we learn and to me that is the beauty of life, that we live to learn and from those learnings grow as human beings. Of course you see a lot of people who haven’t found a way to deal with their fears in life and for such people “failure” can unfortunately lead to paralysis and the inability to take risks in the future. It’s important that we teach kids that taking risks and “failing” is as important in life as taking risks and succeeding.
They might even go hand in hand at least I believe that overcoming our fears is the key to personal transformation.
In relation to a fear of losing clients because of bold solutions/pitches we need to create companies that have a rebellious spirit and we should aim for working fully attuned to our inner missions. As agencies we need to be driven by our firm belief in moving companies forward in every aspect by delivering radical and impactful solutions – not on bigger profits but rather on societal empowerment. We also need to rethink the entire agency-client model and use our creativity to challenge ourselves and the model as a whole. When we set up SPACE10 with IKEA we managed to change the entire model of a client-agency relationship and it has proven to be a huge success. We found a way to build trust and transparency that was reflected in the contract as well as the financial model.
On a personal note I think smaller agencies have huge opportunities to revolutionize the industry because they are less dependent on compromising their visions due to huge running costs, which in many cases drive them to compromise and act out of fear. At the end of day the parties involved are not best served by compromising and is also not the best outcome for the customer.
Media Marketing: With Space10 you are working on defining future living. It’s not just about designing things, but about designing a future way of life. What are the key ingredients and spices of that future?
Carla C: The key ingredients are sustainability, circular design, social responsibility, digital empowerment and equality for all. The gloss would be to make it look and feel amazing, storytell the shit out of it and have full transparency in order to start movements for change. We call ourselves pragmatic idealists which means that we respect the process of change while keeping our vision as a guiding light – always.
Media Marketing: What are the biggest challenges for achieving that vision?
Carla C: There are tons of challenges but that also means that there are tons of opportunities. One of the biggest challenges is the industrial model, which is driven by a philosophy of more wants more, scale is a key and resources (weather human or natural) are abundant and unfairly distributed. We need to understand the bigger picture in order to then break it down and piece by piece move forward until we are able to consolidate and implement from local to global. Digital innovations can be great drivers for human empowerment and equality – new interfaces has proven to be able to change entire social and economic models in record time and the fact that political and economical shifts are taking place, leaves us in a time of great transformation and possibly a much brighter future for many people.
At the Golden Drum, you will present the inner workings of the Space10. Can you tell us a bit more about what you will share with the audience?
Carla C: I think I will leave that as a surprise :)