County’s Festival of Britain Lists 21...

The “Festival of Britain Orange County--1990,” a countywide retail promotion and cultural event scheduled for Oct. 12 through 28, has hired an executive director and has announced 21 local arts and entertainment organizations that will participate. The festival is being co-sponsored by Costa Mesa’s South Coast Plaza mall and the British consulate in Los Angeles.

The executive director is Bruce Joseph, who coordinated “UK/LA ‘88--A Celebration of British Culture,” a 12-week, $7.2-million gala that included presentations by Los Angeles and British arts organizations. Joseph also was artistic coordinator of a Soviet arts festival staged in San Diego last fall.

He will coordinate the festival’s arts component, which is being organized by a committee of local arts officials. Judith Peterson, director of Fullerton’s Muckenthaler Cultural Center and co-chair of the committee, said works with British artists, themes or both are expected from:

The Art Institute of Southern California, Ballet Pacifica, Bowers Museum, Fullerton Museum Center, Garden Grove Shakespeare Festival, Garden Grove Symphony, Children’s Museum at La Habra, Laguna Art Museum, Muckenthaler Cultural Center, Newport Harbor Art Museum, Orange County Performing Arts Center, Orange County Philharmonic Society, Pacific Symphony, Poets Reading Inc., Saddleback College art gallery, South Coast Repertory, South Coast Symphony, Stop-Gap theater troupe, and the UC Irvine Chamber Music Series.

Edwards Theatres and the Pacific Amphitheater also will participate “in some way, but we don’t know how yet,” Peterson said. Peterson said specific arts events will not be announced for a “couple of months,” when participants have finalized their plans. All arts events will take place at participants’ venues. Peterson said 150 groups had been sent applications.

A budget of about $500,000 has been proposed to support the arts projects through grants to the groups, Peterson said, adding that organizers plan to raise the money from public and private sources in Southern California and Britain through a newly formed nonprofit organization. She would not name any specific funding sources but did say that Joseph, who was not available for comment, already has begun work on the effort.

Peterson also declined to give a budget for the entire festival, which will include educational programs on British culture and a British retail promotion, described by organizers as one of the biggest ever staged in the United States, centered at South Coast Plaza mall. Officials have said that all eight mall department stores and more than 50 smaller shops have agreed to take part by selling British products.