Recycling for Arts Program: A New Resource : * Funding: Materials for the Arts aims to gather materials for local nonprofit groups and public artists. It opens officially with a kick-off reception tonight.

After a year that’s seen even high-profile arts organizations confronted by their worst financial nightmares, a new city program hopes not only to combat reduced arts funding--at little cost to taxpayers--but to help the environment at the same time.

Called Materials for the Arts, the program aims to use heightened public awareness of recycling to draw in potential materials and resources--ranging from depreciated computers to unwanted furniture to excess factory goods to used movie sets--for local nonprofit arts organizations and public artists. Also eligible are city, community and educational groups that run art programs, as well as individual artists with “special needs” such as AIDS or homelessness.

“It’s a way to be proactive in the arts community without spending a lot of money, and capture the imagination of the recycling community at the same time” said Adolfo V. Nodal, general manager of the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. “As people find out about the program it should snowball and become a significant source of income for arts organizations--especially the small ones that need it the most.”

In a unique partnership involving Cultural Affairs, the Board of Public Works’ Integrated Solid Waste Management Office, the L.A. Conservation Corps and the L.A. Free Clinic’s STEP Program for homeless youth, Materials for the Arts plans to distribute $1 million in recycled paint, furniture, stage sets and other goods in 1992.

“It’s a way for people who wouldn’t normally contribute to the arts to make a dent,” said Bert Ball, the program’s director, echoing a promotional brochure titled, “How to Become an Arts Patron Without Spending a Dime.” “And for the arts groups, it’s a chance to make new connections: We ask them to send a thank-you letter to donors and invite them to an event, and you never know what might happen--the donor just might like the event and the next thing you know you’ve got an angel.”

The program opens officially with a kick-off reception tonight, but about $100,000 in materials has already been distributed to several local organizations. Among them:

* Macondo Cultural Center is using donated chairs, cabinets and a dishwasher to build a cultural cafe and hangout for Latino artists that will open next month.

* An $80,000 bunkhouse used in the MGM/Pathe film “Of Mice and Men” will be used as the building block for an art program at a summer school for sick children run by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

* L.A. Works used donated dressing room tables and shelving last month to refurbish Hollywood’s historic Ivar Theater, now home to the Inner-City Cultural Center.

* The Colony Studio Theatre received about $2,000 worth of materials, including production flats, moldings and bunk beds, from the New Line Cinema film “Live Wire” for its upcoming production, “To Grandmother’s House We Go.”

“This program definitely makes a difference,” said Paula Ramirez, Macondo executive director. “It definitely made us able to open our cafe sooner. “

Located in what was once the Los Feliz Performing Arts Annex (the center at 3224 Riverside Drive has been vacant since its theater was destroyed by fire in 1986), the program has provided jobs for about a half-dozen homeless and formerly homeless teen-agers who have worked since July to spruce up the city-owned facility. The building was refurbished with donated materials, and the teens, who Ball hopes to keep on to help run the center, are paid by the Los Angeles Conservation Corps through the L.A. Free Clinic’s STEP Program.

“It’s a win-win program, nobody loses here,” said Ball, a former curator who worked with Cultural Affairs’ Nodal in the 1970s at the Washington Project for the Arts. “It’s part of a new future for the city in this hard economic time; it’s a low-maintenance, low-cost program with absolutely no budget--our budget is my ($36,000) salary.”

Ball likened his space to a one-stop department store, in which “people can come in and go shopping for the items they need.” He will also take “wish lists” and watch out specifically for items groups need, such as computers, file cabinets and microphones.

The center also keeps a number of items for loan, including a high-tech speaker system, Hammond organ, sheet music and sewing machines.

According to both Ball and Nodal, a program highlight is the eagerness with which Hollywood film studios--long criticized by the arts community for not supporting their own back yard--have jumped on the bandwagon.

“We’re really lucky to have Hollywood here--they’re a tremendous user and waster of materials and they’ve joined the program very quickly,” said Ball, glancing across a storage area that included sets from Ron Reagan’s defunct talk show and a jail cell used in the film, “Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare.”

“As shows go under and stages are struck, the studios can call Materials for the Arts. . . . We’ll come pick them up, they won’t end up sitting in a landfill, and the studios get thousands of dollars in tax benefits at the same time. And of course theater groups just go nuts to see all this stuff.”

Eventual plans for Materials for the Arts call for a “strike-set hot line” in which theater companies would go directly to studios to pick up any set materials they need, and an eventual partnership in which surplus art supplies would be sent to the L.A. Unified School District. Also in the works is a lending library of musical instruments being coordinated with the help of musician Jackson Browne.