As you know, dear reader, I don’t post unless I have something to say, when an idea strikes. After over 10 years of writing this blog, I still get surprised myself when something new pops up. It did today.

I am reading a book called “Happy Gut,” by Dr. Vincent Pedre. Lately, I have been learning more about Functional Medicine, which in a nut shell is about getting to the root of the cause for disease. This is in direct contrast to a doctor simply attempting to treat the symptoms.

Functional Medicine, instead of just giving someone an antacid, antibiotics, etc., will rather attempt to find out what is causing the problem in the first place and then work on a protocol to help relieve the system of the root problem.

Medical researchers are finding more and more that the gut plays one of the biggest roles in our health. It is all about keeping the microbiome in our system balanced. If something becomes unbalanced, it throws the gut off, which throws off all the dominoes down the line in our system for digestion, hormones, etc. This can translate into many food sensitivities, allergies, autoimmune disorders, and diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer’s and even cancer. If the microbiome is off, it also can affect mental health.

So why am I sharing information about functional medicine and gut health with you today? Because this morning, the idea popped into my head that we as arts managers and administrators are not approaching arts business health in the functional way.

Is it just about the funding, or is it about how the business is run? Are people not coming because the ticket price is too high (maybe), or is there something we are doing with how we relate to people that is turning them off from buying the ticket?

I could give more examples, but I hope you are understanding the point. We often times are working on the symptom instead of looking at the root problems.

We can discuss in future posts what these root problems are, and then we really, truly will be getting somewhere when it comes to healing the arts.

What do you think the underlying causes are? What root attitudes, beliefs, management procedures, are unwelcoming, confusing, difficult to understand, etc.? What are the basic challenges people are having with how we run our events that make it difficult for them to attend and participate?

I hope these questions will get us past the pain points, and instead, focus us to the root causes of pain.

Together we can get to the gut of the issue!

Cheers to happy and loyal audiences,
Shoshana

Shoshana Fanizza
Chief Audience Builder, Audience Development Specialists

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