Funding Reflects the Diversity of ’90 L.A. Festival : Arts: Asian companies and local minority-owned businesses and groups are joining traditional U.S. corporate sponsors for this year’s $4.7-million event.

When 1990’s Los Angeles Festival kicks off in September, not only will the talent in this celebration of Pacific Rim culture come from faraway places--so will much of the money power behind the event.

Like the 1987 Los Angeles Festival, this year’s arts extravaganza is another incarnation of the successful 1984 Olympic Arts Festival. But unlike the 1987 festival, this year’s event is backed not just by the handful of wealthy American companies traditionally known to dabble in the arts, but by Asian businesses and local minority-owned businesses and organizations as well.

“I’ve been in fund raising for 25 years, and I’ve never seen the kind of fund raising that’s come out of all the minority communities,” said Judith Luther, executive director of the Los Angeles Festival. “There’s something about what we’re doing that touches them in a way that the other projects I’ve been involved with has not.”

Said City Councilman Michael Woo: “The festival is to be commended for not rounding up the usual suspects in terms of corporate support. I think this is the first time a major cultural event in Los Angeles has reflected the diversity of the city.”

Except for a small donation from the British Council, $3 million of the $6-million 1987 festival’s budget came from American businesses; the rest came from government sources. Moreover, those private American dollars came from white-owned corporations and foundations; the largest donors included Occidental Petroleum Corp., General Motors, the Rockefeller Foundation and Times Mirror, which owns the Los Angeles Times.

But money for this year’s $4.7-million arts fest includes a whopping $1 million-to-date from the Asian Consortium, an organization of Japanese corporations, as well as $50,000 raised by Los Angeles’ black community, $30,000 contributed by two local Latino businesses, and some $3,000 from Korean-American organizations. Festival organizers predict still more money from Filipino-American and Chinese-American sources in coming months.

Funds from minority groups represent an even more significant percentage to the whole since most of 1987’s corporate donors, as well as its government backers, have radically cut back. (Times Mirror, for example, donated $500,000 to the 1987 festival and $250,000 to the 1990 event). Support from local and national government grants has also dropped--from $3 million in 1987 to just over $500,000 this year.

Luther and festival director Peter Sellars, who is donating his $100,000 salary to the festival, said that although not all the donations from minority donors are as large as the $1 million from Japanese corporations, even the smallest check represents the city’s ethnic groups attempting to support each other rather than facing off in their own camps.

“I have to say that this is the first time the Japanese Business Assn. (also known as the Asian Consortium) has stepped forward with funding for a project that is not Japanese,” Sellars said. “I’d like to think of the festival as a platform and an avenue for this kind of participation.”

At the request of Mayor Tom Bradley, Yukiyasu Togo, president of Toyota Sales USA, spearheaded the fund-raising effort in the Japanese business community; Toyota has donated $100,000 to the event. “This festival really has the potential for breaking down barriers and getting people to work together,” said Jeff Smith, corporate spokesman for Togo.

Sellars and Luther both noted that the black community chose to support the 1990 festival even though this year’s focus is on the Pacific Rim countries, including South America and Australia. The support represents a healing of friction between black artists and festival organizers in 1987, when members of Dance Umbrella, a service organization for black dancers, charged that local black dance troupes had been left out of the festival.

“The first time I started going out publicizing this, what I always got was, ‘There’s nothing in it for black and white people,’ ” Luther said. “It’s true that primary focus of this festival is on the cultures of the Pacific. But the next festival, the next big cultural festival will be about the countries of Africa and the Middle East. It would be real hard to go to (Afro-American) donors next time and say ‘We want you to support us’ if they aren’t at the table this time.”

In March, members of Los Angeles First A.M.E. Church and other predominantly black congregations raised $50,000 for the festival with performances of the gospel opera “Job” at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre. Dr. Thomas Kilgore Jr., pastor emeritus of the Second Baptist Church, said he was “not at all pleased” with the lack of involvement of the city’s ethnic groups in the 1987 festival and cited the 1990 festival as a chance to break the pattern.

“My own complaint about the 1987 festival was that it was too Eurocentric,” Kilgore said. “There is no city that has the kind of ethnic mix that L.A. has. . . . We want it to be a people’s festival.”

Some involved in this festival believe that forging ties with the Pacific Rim through supporting its artists makes good business sense.

“The 1990s is going to be the decade of the Pacific Rim,” said architect Raymond Chang, who owns Alhambra’s Hannon Development Co. “The import and export, the business activities, the amount of immigration to the West Coast--that definitely makes a difference to the people of Los Angeles.”

Chang has teamed up with Jimmy Au, a Chinese-born businessman who owns Jimmy Au’s Small and Short clothing store chain, to bring all the ethnic groups together with the Nikkodo International Karaoke Contest, a singing contest with representatives of each group taking part.

Julia Nagano, public information director for the Port of Los Angeles where some festival events will take place, said the port, located in San Pedro, became involved not only to publicize the port facilities, but also because “a lot of customers and clients have to do with the Pacific Rim countries as well as European countries.” But Luther noted that the non-European character of the festival first made fund raising more difficult. “There is no question that it’s easier to raise money for the Royal Shakespeare Festival . . . than for the aborigines of Australia,” she said. “I mean, there are not a lot of big aboriginal corporations saying ‘Let me give you dough.’ ”

Sellars agreed: “I think for awhile there was a tendency for a number of blue chip, officially white companies to think of sitting this one out. I initially had one prominent CEO in L.A. say to me: ‘If these people want a festival, they can pay for it. . . . And of course, there are those who say, ‘Why would we want to support the work of all these people whose names we can’t pronounce?’ The fact is, you probably couldn’t pronounce the names of the first cast of Paris Opera Ballet, either, but people are trained to think of that as real culture.”

Sellars added that such attitudes have changed dramatically since the fund raising began. Cutbacks in corporate funding this year, for the most part reflect the economic climate, he said, rather than a rejection of the festival itself.

Festival organizers have still not managed to coax much money out of the entertainment industry. Although Sellars predicts the situation will change, approaches to such powerful players as Fox Inc. chairman Barry Diller and Disney Co. chairman Michael Eisner have so far resulted in no donations. “It is shocking to me that the Afro-American community will give us ($50,000), and we can’t get it out of Hollywood,” Luther said. “It’s a scandal--it’s just a scandal.”

Tom McGovern, vice president of Raleigh Studios, is one of few entertainment executives seeking to raise festival funds through luncheons and other efforts, acknowledges the difficulty in getting Hollywood dollars. “I’m a little surprised, because we’ve tried really hard,” he said.

“It’s been a puzzle to me, because people who normally come out in support of the arts have been reluctant. Maybe they’re afraid that if people are spending their money on live entertainment, they won’t be going to the movies.”

FUNDING THE L.A. FESTIVAL 1990 AND 1987

1990: $4.3 Million Raised to Date Asian Consortium: $1 million U.S. Corporations: $1.9 million Government: $545,000

* Community Redevelopment Agency: $250,000

* Port of Los Angeles: $40,000

* National Endowment for the Arts: $30,000

* Cultural Affairs Dept. of L.A.: $225,000 Other Collected to Date: $855,000 **

** Note: Other category includes $300,000 in in-kind donations, $600,000 in projected ticket sales and $345,000 still to be raised, for a total budget goal of $4.7 million.

1987: $6.1 Million Budget U.S. Corportations and Foundations: $3 million Government: $3.1 million

* Amateur Athletic Foundation: $2 million

* Community Redevelopment Agency: $1 million

* National Endowment for the Arts: $89,000