Meet Diane Scott: Director of Artist Services
By Sarah Richardson
At the heart of Mid-America Arts Alliance is a passionate team working behind the scenes to empower artists across the region. Continuing our series featuring the incredible individuals at M-AAA, this edition highlights Diane Scott, our director of Artist Services.
Diane’s team leads professional development programs for individual artists, including Artist INC, Catalyze, Artist Leadership Fellows, and Interchange. In fact, she was the founding director and principal designer of Artist INC, which recently celebrated 15 years of empowering creators.
In addition to being an arts administrator, Diane is an educator and writer specializing in arts entrepreneurship. Below, she shares the origin story of Artist INC, key takeaways from her new book, and the inspiration behind the Artist Services biweekly newsletter, Pushing the Flywheel.
Meet Diane Scott, M-AAA Director of Artist Services
How did you come to this work? What’s your connection to it and your background?
I have a BA in theatre, but while my education was excellent, it didn’t prepare me for a career in the arts. After three years of trying to figure it out, I pursued an MBA, and I constantly thought, “If only I’d known this as an artist.” Post-MBA, a mentor encouraged me to apply for a lecturer position in the business school, where I spent 12 years teaching management and organizational behavior.
Later, I joined UMKC’s Innovation Center to support second-stage entrepreneurs. However, after the 2008 financial crash, many of them no longer had the resources or time for additional training. Around that time, ArtsKC and Charlotte Street approached the Innovation Center needing research on business training for artists. With little work in front of me and my position in jeopardy, my boss connected me, not realizing my arts background—it was kismet.
With ArtsKC and Charlotte Street, I conducted a feasibility study, expecting to find an existing program for artist business training that we could adopt. Instead, we found a gap. So, we applied for grant funding and built Artist INC from the ground up.
You lead M-AAA’s Artist Services division. What does your team do and what aspects of the programming do you find most meaningful or exciting?
Our focus is on helping artists create enduring practices—ones that allow them to keep making art throughout their lifetimes. How any individual artist puts together the pieces they have to invest (money, time, and creative bandwidth) to create an enduring practice is wholly unique. They’re all starting from different places and working toward their unique definitions of success. Watching the myriad of creative ways they do this inspires me everyday.
Diane Scott’s book Artist Entrepreneurship for Life: Making Art Work for You
The most exciting part of our work is the constantly expanding network of artist connections. Artist INC has a network of more than 2,500 artists across eight states and it grows daily. The power of that network in supporting each other is nothing short of amazing. Even though I know this is how it works, I am still surprised by it. Traditional business people have known the power of networks—think fraternities, sororities, and rotary clubs. Artist INC helps artists create a similarly powerful network for themselves.
Your new book explores artist entrepreneurship. What inspired you to write it, and what key takeaway(s) do you hope artists gain from it?
In 2010, while working with Artist INC, I set a 10-year goal to write a book sharing what we’d learned so more artists could access it. Realizing I wouldn’t have time as a full-time arts administrator, I became a professor of arts management at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. Seven years in, a sabbatical allowed me to make the book a reality. Though I missed my original timeline, Artist Entrepreneurship for Life: Making Art Work for You was released earlier this year. Now, my goal is to get it into the hands of as many artists as possible.
I hope artists take away three key lessons:
- Strategic planning is essential. Many artists ask about websites or grants, but before investing resources, they need to define where they are, where they want to be, and how to get from point A to B. As solopreneurs, artists must make careful choices about their time, money, and creative bandwidth.
- Success should be self-defined. Many assume success means reaching an industry archetype—Broadway, a blue-chip gallery—but fewer than 5% achieve that. There are many ways to craft enduring, happy, and financially profitable lives in the arts. Artist Entrepreneurship for Life features 12 real artists from the M-AAA region, sharing their personal paths and expanding what’s possible.
- The creative process—and business—is not linear. As Jim Collins introduced in his 2001 book Good to Great, the work is like pushing a flywheel. At first, you push, and there is so much resistance that you can barely make the flywheel move. But if you continue to push, eventually you will gain momentum and the flywheel will push itself.
More Art for YOU!
Does Pushing the Flywheel sound familiar? It’s the title of M-AAA’s biweekly newsletter and blog! Sign up here to receive updates on upcoming grants, residencies, and artist opportunities in our region and beyond.
Want a different format? Visit (and bookmark) the Pushing the Flywheel blog here.