About

KURATED BY is a studio built on years of experience helping companies define their strategy, sharpen their identity and create work that moves both revenue and people. Over time, we have seen a growing demand for something beyond conventional branding: a need for authentic relevance, meaningful collaborations and a closer connection to the culture shaping people’s lives.

Where we come from.

From building brands to building cultural relevance.

Kjetil and Ellen have spent years working together at the intersection of brand strategy, design, communication and culture.

Kjetil was one of the founders of Bleed before going on to establish ANTI with Kenneth Pedersen. Ellen joined the journey as Managing Director of ANTI Sweden and ANTI Denim, a bold fashion project rooted in True Norwegian Black Metal culture before she joined as managing director of ANTI Hamar, running the studio for 10 years.

ANTI Denim became an important turning point. It taught us that brands build real relevance when they do more than communicate. By creating products, collaborating with the right people and participating in an existing cultural conversation, the brand connected with its audience in a way traditional marketing rarely could.

We learned every part of the process: developing the idea, building the product, producing it, selling it, creating attention and growing an international community around it. The brand was fearless, timely and culturally specific. It created interference, entered fashion on its own terms and took us around the world.

Since then, we have worked with a wide range of national and international clients, helped build businesses and contributed to work recognised by more than 100 international awards. Through that experience, we have developed a deep understanding of what brands need strategically, creatively and commercially to earn a meaningful position in the market.

KURATED BY brings those experiences together.

It is a return to the things we care about most: brands, culture, art, people and ideas. A focused studio built to help ambitious companies move beyond conventional communication and create genuine cultural relevance.

Our role is not simply to make brands look culturally connected. It is to help them earn that position through the right strategy, the right collaborators and work that contributes something authentic.

KURATED BY is where decades of brand experience meet a lifelong belief in the power of culture.

We represent a community of collaborators, artists and personal friends who represent the way we think and work. Here are a short introduction of our team and closest collaborators.

Claus Heiberg

Claus Heiberg became a friend through culture-driven projects, including Briskeby’s 25th anniversary celebration at the Norwegian Opera. With experience from Stavernfestivalen, six years as Managing Director of Porsche and a stop at Reiulf Ramstad Architects, he brings a rare mix of cultural understanding, commercial experience and a broad network into Kurated by. He understands how culture can move through very different projects and make them more relevant, more credible and more valuable. And if you are seriously into watches, you have found the right person “ you never really own a Patek Philippe, you merely look after it for the next generation” you know the drill :-)

Bjørk Ellingsbø

Photographer, content producer and creative. We have followed Bjørk since she started out as a young and ambitious photographer, and Kurated by now represents her commercially. We manage commissions, bookings and brand collaborations, while helping develop the right opportunities around her work and creative direction.

Read more about her work in this interview. Link

ANTI

We are founded by ANTI and we have a large base of resources available thru them, from designers to art directors and people with high level proven skills in the creative industry. We can connect with our motherbrand whenever we are in need of a large scale production or some of europes best designers.

AWARDS

Awards are meaningless. Until you win one.

When we started out, we wanted to be the best. So we looked for ways to measure the work, test our ideas and put our creativity on display.

We did things differently. We built a denim brand, opened a small store and sold only one item from each product line. It challenged the category, and earned recognition.

Over the years, Kjetil and Ellen have both been part of building work, teams and collaborations recognised nationally and internationally. Through his years at ANTI, Kjetil contributed to work receiving more than 100 awards, including a Golden Pencil for lifelong achievement at Gullblyanten. None of it would, of course, have happened without the exceptional people working alongside us.

We still believe in ambition, creative resistance and challenging what already exists. Culture rewards the brands willing to take a position, enter the conversation and dare to become part of something bigger.