As an actor, Eric Booth performed in many plays on Broadway, Off-Broadway and around the country, playing over 23 Shakespearean roles (Hamlet three times), and winning “Best Actor” awards on both coasts. Throughout 1981, he performed the American tour of Alec McCowen’s one-man play St. Mark’s Gospel. He has performed many times on television, directed five productions, and produced two plays in New York.
As a businessman, he started a small company, Alert Publishing, that in seven years became the largest of its kind in the U.S. analyzing research on trends in American lifestyles and publishing newsletters, books, and reports. He became a major figure in trend analysis, frequently quoted by the major media with interviews often appearing in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. He appeared as an expert on NBC News, Sunday Today, and several times on CNN. He was given a syndicated radio program on the Business Radio Network, and was a frequent speaker to business groups. He sold his company in 1991 in order to work full time on passion projects in arts learning.
As an author, he has had eight books published. His newest book (2023) is Making Change: Teaching Artists and Their Role in Shaping a Better World, the first book that introduces teaching artistry to those who don’t know what it is (or those who do but could do much more). Tending the Perennials: The Art and Spirit of a Personal Religion (2019) focuses on the ways art and spirituality overlap in everyday life and is a companion book to The Everyday Work of Art, which was a brief bestseller, won three awards and was a Book of the Month Club selection. He has written three dozen magazine articles, was the Founding Editor of the Teaching Artist Journal, and his book The Music Teaching Artist’s Bible was published by Oxford University Press in 2009. Playing for Their Lives (co-authored with Tricia Tunstall) (W.W. Norton, 2016) sprang from studying El Sistema-inspired programs in 25 countries around the world. He has placed articles in the Harvard Education Review/Focus Issue on Arts Education, in the special creativity focus issue of Educational Leadership, in Symphony magazine, as well as the creativity chapter in the Routledge International Handbook on Arts Education (2015).
In arts learning, he taught at Juilliard (12 years), Stanford University, NYU, Tanglewood and Lincoln Center Education (for 40 years, where he is now a co-Founder of the Teaching Artist Development Labs), and The Kennedy Center (20 years). He was the Faculty Chair of the Empire State Partnership program for three years (the largest arts-in-education project in America), and held one of six chairs on The College Board’s Arts Advisory Committee for seven years. He serves as a consultant for many organizations, cities, states and businesses around the country, including seven of the ten largest orchestras in America, and five national service organizations. He consults with arts organizations, businesses, boards of directors, state arts and education agencies, national arts organizations and occasionally with high tech and medical firms on their innovation work. He is widely referred to as one of the nation’s most creative teachers and as "the father of the teaching artist profession," and this is one of many topics he consults on. Formerly the Founding Director of the Teacher Center of the Leonard Bernstein Center (and still on the Board of its school reform program Artful Learning), he is a frequent keynote speaker on the arts to groups of all kinds. He delivered the closing keynote speech to UNESCO’s first ever worldwide arts education conference (Lisbon 2006), and to UNESCO's 2014 World Culture Conference (Seoul), and he gave the keynote speech to the first world conference on orchestras' connections to communities (Glasgow 2007). He completed a six-week speaking tour of Scotland and Australia, speaking to over 40 organizations, government agencies, and universities about creativity and teaching artistry, and has subsequently been brought in to introduce or develop teaching artistry in six countries. He was the Senior Advisor to the Music National Service initiative (lead trainer and training designer for the launch of MusicianCorps), and now serves on the Board of Directors of ArtistYear (a service year in schools for young professional artists) and is a Founding Senior Faculty memeber of the Academy for Impact in Music, based in Europe. He is a senior advisor to the movement developing El Sistema-inspired sites around the U.S. and world; and he was the founding publisher of The Ensemble (for the U.S./Canada) and The World Ensemble (for the global movement), the two newsletters that are the main communications vehicles of the Music for Social Change movement around the world. He is the Co-Founder and Co-Leader of the Community Engagement Lab in Vermont, a project that weaves bold community engagement into intensive school creativity projects in partnership with community members and organizations. He has co-designed all four of the largest conferences in the performing arts in U.S. history. He is the co-Founder of the International Teaching Artist Conferences, which have been held in Oslo (2012), Brisbane (2o14), Edinburgh (2016), and New York (2018), and Seoul (2020), and in 2018 he launched the ITAC Collaborative which goes all year round, building the first global network of artists who work in community and education settings. In 2021, he launched ITAC IMPACT: Climate, and the Climate Collective wife five commissioned teaching artists projects around the world that use creative engagement of communities to change beliefs and behaviors about the climate crisis; the Collective includes a group of dozens of climate-passionate artists who meet regularly to build their network and effectiveness.
He is the first person to receive an honorary doctoral degree (New England Conservatory, 2012) for teaching artistry. He received the lifetime service award in Arts Education from the National Guild of Community Arts Education. He received Americans for the Arts 2015 Arts Education Leadership Award, the most prestigious award in U.S. arts education -- the first teaching artist ever to receive this award. He was named in the "Top 50 Most Powerful and Influential Leaders in the Nonprofit Arts (USA) for 2015" -- the only teaching artist, and the only freelancer, on the list.