Orange County to Celebrate British Culture

Organizers of a planned 17-day “Festival of Britain 1990” in Orange County next year hope to give Southern California arts enthusiasts a chance to experience some United Kingdom culture.

More to the point, they hope to give shoppers the chance to own some.

The October festival, described by organizers one of the biggest British consumer product promotions ever staged in the United States, is to be centered at Costa Mesa’s South Coast Plaza mall. Many of Orange County’s most prominent arts organizations plan to present “major events” in visual arts, theater, pop and classical music, film, dance and opera featuring British artists, themes or both.

Twenty-five Orange County arts institutions now plan to participate in the festival now set to open Oct. 12, 1990. Included are South Coast Repertory, the Newport Harbor Art Museum, the Laguna Art Museum, the Muckenthaler Cultural Center, the Orange County Performing Arts Center, the Pacific Symphony, Opera Pacific, the Orange County Philharmonic Society and the Stop Gap drama-therapy troupe, according to Kevin E. Consey, chairman of a committee of local arts officials organizing the festival’s art component.

But “the principal ingredient of the festival will be the consumer goods promotion,” John Houlton, vice consul at the British consulate in Los Angeles, said Tuesday in a phone interview.

South Coast Plaza is owned and operated by the C.J. Segerstrom & Sons Inc. development company whose managing partner, Henry T. Segerstrom, and his family have donated millions of dollars in cash and land to the Orange County Performing Arts Center, the South Coast Repertory and other local arts venues.

Funding for “Festival of Britain” has not been determined, Houlton said. Consey’s committee wants to raise $500,000 through public and private sources in Southern California and in Britain to support the art component. Fund raising is expected to begin in two weeks.

A mall spokesman said that all eight South Coast Plaza department stores and, to date, more than 50 smaller shops have agreed to take part in the festival by selling everything from British antiques to British food to contemporary British fashion.