IMAGINATION CELEBRATION TO BRING ARTS TO CHILDREN

The second annual Orange County Imagination Celebration, part of a nationwide showcasing of arts for children, will open Saturday in shopping malls and county parks, as well as the South Coast Repertory Theatre and the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Heralded by organizers as Orange County’s biggest annual “cultural mobilization,” this Imagination Celebration is one of 26 such festivals being held for this year under auspices of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.

Orange County is again only one of two festival locales in California. The Northern California celebration is being held May 4-13 in Marin County, mostly at Marin Center in San Rafael.

This year, the newly opened Orange County Performing Arts Center is a festival site for the first time. Only two other large arts complexes are involved in the 1987 celebrations: the Kennedy Center, which is playing host to the monthlong national festival in Washington, and the Kentucky Center for the Arts in Louisville, focus of a May 15-18 program.

Organizers say that such festivals are vital as a means of exposing children to the arts.

“With all the arts cuts being made or proposed in the schools, these festivals are more crucial than ever,” said Lis Dungan, a member of the California Alliance for Arts Education and the Orange County festival’s chief coordinator. “Arts programs are an educational essential to be encouraged and extended, not eliminated.”

Thirty Orange County organizations from the arts and other fields are represented in this year’s 16-day festival, which is being sponsored by the California Alliance, Orange County Performing Arts Center and Orange County Department of Education. More than 250,000 children and 5,000 teachers are expected to view the events, which will feature performances and artworks by hundreds of students and adults, Dungan said.

The festival opener will be the “Very Special Arts Festival” Saturday at the Brea Mall shopping center from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., featuring performances and artworks by the physically and mentally handicapped. Hosts for a 1 p.m. ceremony will include actor William Allen Young.

A one-man show, “According to Coyote,” will be presented Monday through May 1 at South Coast Repertory Theatre in Costa Mesa. The Kennedy Center-commissioned work, based on Native American folk stories, will be performed by John Kauffman, artistic director of the Honolulu Theatre for Youth. The morning event will be offered to student audiences only and is not open to the public.

Other events during the Imagination Celebration include:

--May 2. Visual and performing arts will be given at the Anaheim Plaza, Mission Viejo Mall and Westminster Mall shopping centers from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Celebrities will include actors Jack Kelly (at Westminster Mall) and Gale Storm (Mission Viejo Mall).

--May 3. Outdoor arts programs will be conducted from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in three county parks: Craig (Fullerton), Laguna Niguel and Mason (Irvine).

--May 9. The Imaginarium arts fair will return to South Coast Village’s Mercantile Building in Santa Ana. Featured in the free 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. event will be exhibits, workshops and performances involving everything from opera, jazz and poetry to photography and computer graphics.

--May 10. The Internationale multicultural concert of songs and dances will be held at 3 p.m. in the Orange County Performing Arts Center’s Segerstrom Hall. The sponsoring Historical & Cultural Foundation has announced that folk singer Burl Ives and pop singer Jose Feliciano will be guest performers. Admission will be $3.50 for children and $5 for adults.

Many previously scheduled events will be running concurrently with the festival. These include five daytime concerts for students at Segerstrom Hall. Presented at various times between Tuesday and May 5, featured performing groups will be the Orange County Youth Symphony, Disneyland Band, Orange County Philharmonic Orchestra and California Wind Orchestra.

Another concurrent event at Segerstrom Hall will be a high school choral festival presented 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. May 9 by the Pacific Chorale. The event, to involve 600 singers from 16 schools, will be open to the public.

Student artworks in the “Color It Orange” show will be displayed May 4-10 at the Art Institute of Southern California in Laguna Beach. The annual countywide juried exhibition is sponsored by the Designing Women support organization.

According to coordinator Dungan, this year’s Orange County Imagination Celebration is costing $32,000 (the same cost of the first festival held in March, 1986). The local sponsors have already received $5,000 from the Kennedy Center.

The Kennedy Center started the Imagination Celebration festivals in 1977. This year’s locales include Birmingham, Ala.; Tampa, Fla.; Syracuse, N.Y.; Milwaukee; Tucson and Seattle. Two locales are overseas--in Alconbury, England, and Sydney, Australia.