Episode 67: Eric Booth: Making Stuff You Care About to Make Change

This episode's guest is artist, educator, and global cultural leader, Eric Booth. Eric’s passion is activating the artistry of others to foster wellness, create thriving communities and change behaviors for the better. Eric has written seven books, taught at Juilliard, Stanford, Lincoln Center, and consulted on arts, learning, teaching, and innovation across the globe.

In 2015 Eric Booth was given the nation’s highest award in arts education (the first artist to receive it). He began as a Broadway actor, and became a businessman (his company became the largest of its kind in the U.S. in 7 years), and author of seven books, including the bestseller The Everyday Work of Art, Playing for Their Lives (the only book about music for social change programs around the world) and Tending the Perennials, and over 30 published articles. He has been on the faculty of Juilliard (12 years), Tanglewood (5 years), The Kennedy Center (20 years), and Lincoln Center Education (for 41 years). He serves as a consultant for many arts organizations (including seven of the ten largest U.S. orchestras), cities, states and businesses around the U.S., and in 11 other countries. He has founded and led teaching artist training programs around the world. A frequent keynote speaker, he gave the closing keynote to UNESCO's first world arts education conference, and founded the International Teaching Artist Collaborative. Website : ericbooth.net

Anton Checkhov:  29 January 1860[note 2] – 15 July 1904[note 3]) was a Russian[3] playwright and short-story writer who is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics.[

The Bear: A Joke in One Act, or The Boor (Russian: Медведь: Шутка в одном действии, tr. Medved': Shutka v odnom deystvii, 1888), is a one-act comedic play written by Russian author Anton Chekhov. The play was originally dedicated to Nikolai Nikolaevich Solovtsov, Chekhov's boyhood friend and director/actor who first played the character Smirnov.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi:  29 September 1934 – 20 October 2021) was a Hungarian-American psychologist. He recognized and named the psychological concept of "flow", a highly focused mental state conducive to productivity.

This episode's guest is artist, educator, and global cultural leader, Eric Booth. Eric’s passion is activating the artistry of others to foster wellness, create thriving communities and change behaviors for the better. Eric has written seven books, taught at Juilliard, Stanford, Lincoln Center, and consulted on arts, learning, teaching, and innovation across the globe.

In 2015 Eric Booth was given the nation’s highest award in arts education (the first artist to receive it). He began as a Broadway actor, and became a businessman (his company became the largest of its kind in the U.S. in 7 years), and author of seven books, including the bestseller The Everyday Work of Art, Playing for Their Lives (the only book about music for social change programs around the world) and Tending the Perennials, and over 30 published articles. He has been on the faculty of Juilliard (12 years), Tanglewood (5 years), The Kennedy Center (20 years), and Lincoln Center Education (for 41 years). He serves as a consultant for many arts organizations (including seven of the ten largest U.S. orchestras), cities, states and businesses around the U.S., and in 11 other countries. He has founded and led teaching artist training programs around the world. A frequent keynote speaker, he gave the closing keynote to UNESCO's first world arts education conference, and founded the International Teaching Artist Collaborative. Website : ericbooth.net

Anton Checkhov:  29 January 1860[note 2] – 15 July 1904[note 3]) was a Russian[3] playwright and short-story writer who is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics.[

The Bear: A Joke in One Act, or The Boor (Russian: Медведь: Шутка в одном действии, tr. Medved': Shutka v odnom deystvii, 1888), is a one-act comedic play written by Russian author Anton Chekhov. The play was originally dedicated to Nikolai Nikolaevich Solovtsov, Chekhov's boyhood friend and director/actor who first played the character Smirnov.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi:  29 September 1934 – 20 October 2021) was a Hungarian-American psychologist. He recognized and named the psychological concept of "flow", a highly focused mental state conducive to productivity.[

Gospel of Mark, Alec McCowen: In 1977, Alec McCowen – unanimously regarded then and now as one of the finest actors in the English language – gave his first solo performance of St. Mark’s Gospel (King James Version) with minimal staging in a tiny church basement in Newcastle, England. Since these humble beginnings, the McCowen St. Mark’s Gospel has become a theatrical marvel of our time. Mr. McCowen, who recites the entire text of the Gospel from memory in this presentation, was nominated for a Tony Award in 1979 for his impressive work.

Arts in Corrections: Arts in Corrections was a program of the California Department of Corrections from 1981 to 2011. At its height it had a full and part-time faculty of over 1000 artists and an incarcerated student body and audience of 25,000. Shuttered in the wake of the great recession it was revived as a joint program of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the California Arts Council. The program currently operates in all of California’s 34 prisons.

Jose Alfonso: José Manuel Cerqueira Afonso dos Santos (2 August 1929 – 23 February 1987), known professionally as José Afonso and also popularly known as Zeca Afonso or simply Zeca, was a Portuguese singer-songwriter. One of the most influential folk and protest musicians in the history of Portugal, he became an icon in Portugal due to the role of his music in the resistance against the dictatorial Estado Novo regime.

Estado Novo: The Estado Novo was one of the longest-surviving authoritarian regimes in Europe in the 20th century. Opposed to communism, socialism, syndicalism, anarchism, liberalism and anti-colonialism, the regime was conservative, corporatist, and nationalist in nature, defending Portugal's traditional Catholicism.

Joseph Campbell: (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American writer. He was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human experience. Campbell's best-known work is his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), in which he discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero shared by world mythologies, termed the monomyth.

Audre Lorde: Poet and author Audre Lorde used her writing to shine light on her experience of the world as a Black lesbian woman and later, as a mother and person suffering from cancer. A prominent member of the women’s and LGBTQ rights movements, her writings called attention to the multifaceted nature of identity and the ways in which people from different walks of life could grow stronger together. 

Maxine Green: Through inquiries into sociology, history, and especially philosophy and literature, Maxine Greene explored living in awareness and "wide-awakeness" in order to advance social justice. Her thinking about existence and the power of imagination have been brought to life through her study, academic appointments, essays and books. In her teaching, she desires to educate those who speak, write, and resist in their own voices, rather than mimic her ideas and language. We look forward hearing your voices here in these pages. 

Elaine Scarry (born June 30, 1946) is an American essayist and professor of English and American Literature and Language. She is the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. Her interests include Theory of Representation, the Language of Physical Pain, and Structure of Verbal and Material Making in Art, Science and the Law.

10,000 things: “The Ten Thousand Things” is a common phrase found in Taoist and Buddhist writings to connote the material diversity of the universe. Lao Tzu, for example, writes in the Tao Te Ching: Tao produced the One. The One produced the two.

El Sistema: (which translates to The System) is a publicly financed, voluntary sector, music-education program, founded in Venezuela in 1975 by Venezuelan educator, musician, and activist José Antonio Abreu.[1] It later adopted the motto "Music for Social Change." El Sistema-inspired programs provide what the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies describes as "free classical music education that promotes human opportunity and development for impoverished children."

Academy for Impact Through Music:At its core, AIM is a lab for learning: we gather, innovate and spread good practices for young people to empower themselves through music educatio

ITAC, the International Teaching Artist Collaborative: The International Teaching Artist Collaborative brings together artists, organizations, funders, and researchers from all over the world to explore key issues relating to participatory arts practices.

(The Everyday Work of Art: Awakening the Extraordinary in Your Daily Life: Eric Booth Book of the Month Club Selection, and winner of the Broadway Theatre Institute and Benjamin Franklin awards, The Everyday Work of Art has earned a wide, varied and passionate followingin the arts, education, business, and spiritual communities. Its wide appeal springs from its unique and powerful redefinition of art.