Today we’d like to introduce you to Josh Scott.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Art House 808 came from my wife and I’s desire to be a part of impacting our local community of artists. We are artists ourselves and have long, successful careers doing many different disciplines. We saw a really massive gap and have experienced how under-serviced Grandview is in this area. My company JHS Pedals is world-renowned, and my YouTube show is equally known across the globe, yet there wasn’t any local impact in what we do. And that really started to bug us a couple of years ago. So we started thinking of how to change that and do something meaningful with our community.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Art House 808 is almost one year old since its nonprofit establishment. Our first event was in February, and the road has been fairly successful in the fact that our community has responded in ways that we never saw coming. At our first artist gathering, which is an event where we simply open the doors and gather artists of all disciplines to relationally connect and to see how we can help each other, we expected five to ten people but almost 50 came that first night. We asked two questions at those meetings:
1. What are you making?
2. How can we help?
Those questions have been the backbone of what we’ve done, and artists have come out of the woodwork of our community from the side streets, from the businesses, to people who’ve never dreamed that they would display their artwork or even have the nerve to ask for help.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Personally, I am the owner/founder of JHS Pedals, and I started it 18 years ago. I am most known for that across the globe. I’m most proud of how I have created things that I wanted to create and how they resonated with the guitar industry and community at large. My day-to-day world is filming for our YouTube show, the JHS Show, as well as writing, managing a team that runs my business of around 45 employees, designing circuits and marketing and selling those circuits as guitar pedals into the music industry. I think what sets me apart from others is humility and a true interest in how things are made even if I am not the one making them. A lot of my work over the last five years has been as a writer, and as a documentarian, sharing the stories of invention and creativity from all over the world and using that information to inspire people to make the things that are in them to make. Art House 808 is an extension of that into our local community, and it has been one of the most enjoyable things I’ve ever done. It has inspired me in so many ways to work with people like me who are right next door.
Who else deserves credit in your story?
My co-founder and wife Alice Scott deserves all the credit for what ArtHouse 808 has done and is known for in our community. She is the ultimate spokesperson for being authentic and doing what you’re passionate about. There’s not a single event that happens or idea that becomes a reality without her immense efforts and talents.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.arthouse808.com, www.jhspedals.com
- Instagram: @808arthouse , @jhspedals
- Facebook: @arthouse808
- Youtube: @jhspedals
- Other: https://substack.com/@joshuaheathscott?r=58tk4n&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=profile
