Each October the Foundation Center focuses on the arts.  Check out its special arts funding website for reports on best practices in the arts, lists of grantmakers, and video trainings just for arts organizations and artists.  More resources are here.

Here at home, Montgomery County has dramatically cut its funding for local arts.  Arts groups are still finding ways to keep creating, as they always have.  Smaller organizations are supporting each other through CultureWorks Community Arts Network. 

Since the onset of the recession - ironically a time when creativity is needed most - we've heard that art is not a "basic human need."  (30,000 year-old cave paintings might suggest otherwise.)  But art doesn't fill our bellies or heat our homes.  So why should we fund it?  In answer to that question, here's a video from the Ontario College of Art and Design: