By Carla Cammilla Hjort

Rebel Academy is an inspirational platform for creative and cultural innovators and entrepreneurs. The idea for Rebel Academy surfaced after I had held a few talks about being a creative entrepreneur, having shared the story behind and

One day I came into contact with a sweet woman from The Danish Business Authority Majken who invited me to consult on creative entrepreneurship. She recognized a need to transform more creative Danish talent into striving businesses. That day led to the birth of Rebel Academy, supported by The Danish Business Authority.

Since I started ArtRebels in 2007, part of me has slowly but surely transformed into a businesswoman. The past six years have been an intense journey of self-taught business education combined with an endless number of creative projects, ideas and collaborators.

When I started ArtRebels I knew very little about the business aspects of running a creative company but I had the conviction that if my passion was big enough and my idea “good” enough, I would be able to learn the business aspects by reading, being mentored and most importantly, by DOING.

I quickly realized that having dreams is one thing, turning them into profitable businesses an entirely different story. I’m still in the process of learning these skills and probably getting closer than ever before! Ironically I’m also getting closer than ever before to losing it all. The reason being that the bigger it gets the more fragile and difficult it becomes. Once you go from being a one-man show to having an entire organization, you enter a completely different ballpark.

I used to be a hippie. My life was simple and I was happy. I was spending a lot of time on beaches playing with fire sticks, stretching on yoga mats and simply reflecting on life and its bigger meaning. I became a body therapist and meditation teacher in India. I was bald and wore a mandala. My father was convinced I had joined a sect. Being an entrepreneur himself, surely he thought his daughter was lost for good. I wasn´t.

I did get lost for a while but I started searching. I knew there had to be more to life than getting an education or trying to satisfy my father. I was searching for meaning. The big meaning.

One day I had a moment of clarity and I realized that all of my journeys and hours of therapy and self-exploration had finally paid off. I got the feeling that for the first time I could start living my life without living in fear of not being good enough, loved enough, cool enough or rich enough. I realized that living true to myself meant I had to be a rebel, accept my aloneness and let go of all the old ideas and thought patterns that had dominated my youth and teen years. This was also the time I started to become an entrepreneur.

My point is that to become an entrepreneur I believe you have to explore yourself, find your true passions and perhaps most importantly find the inner strength it takes to transform ideas into reality. Unfortunately there is no easy way to success and money, which is why passion is so important! You need to want something enough for money not to matter, yet keep the idea of profit in mind and learn how to sell your talent, product or ideas.

Rebel Academy is a personal project developed through passion and I hope that it will become a platform that inspires, supports and helps evolve great talent within the creative and cultural fields. Being a creative and cultural entrepreneur can be challenging, especially because many creative people know very little about how to run a business. Our hope and ambition is to support this process as much as possible while creating opportunities for new networks, businesses, ideas and projects.

I would like to use this opportunity to thank everybody involved as well as the mentors who share their experiences, ideas and networks with you, with the wish of helping new talents grow!

Enjoy and remember to get involved!