(Sounding Board, February 2003) Composers Suitcase™, the Forum's multi-cultural elementary music education curriculum, has headed a few miles north - from Whittier, Calif., where it's in its second year as a pilot program, to Ojai, Calif. The renowned Ojai Music Festival - whose music directors have included Igor Stravinsky, Pierre Boulez, and Michael Tilson Thomas - approached the Forum shortly after seeing a presentation on Suitcase at a meeting of California Arts Council Demonstration Project Grants in Arts Education recipients. After discussions with Forum Director of Education Krystal Banfield and Director of Assessment Patricia Shifferd, the Ojai Festival organizers concluded that parts of the Suitcase curriculum would complement their own arts-education initiative, BRAVO! Consequentially, the festival is using Suitcase's Latin-American unit in Ojai third-grade classrooms.

"We saw this as an opportunity to evaluate the curriculum in a new environment," says Shifferd. "The Ojai project differs from the Whittier test site in several crucial ways: In Ojai, the program is taught by music educators, instead of regular classroom teachers as it is in Whittier. Ojai has also decided not to include classroom visits from composers as we're doing in Whittier. Finally, Ojai is a far more rural community with a different demographic makeup. As we hope to eventually offer Suitcase to schools across the country, this is a fantastic opportunity to see how the curriculum holds up in a radically different teaching environment."

For more information on this program, contact Director of Education Krystal Banfield at kbanfield@composersforum.org or (651) 251-2812.

Implementation of Composers Suitcase is administered by the Forum's Los Angles Chapter and funded by the California Arts Council, a state agency.