When Ryan Murphy, the creator of the runaway Fox hit Glee, accepted an Emmy award for the direction of the show’s pilot episode, he said during his acceptance speech that the TV comedy ultimately was about the importance of arts education.

It’s no secret that seemingly every time the economy goes south and cuts in public spending must be made, the ax often falls on arts programs. Although this is a well-worn gripe here, the arts world has been abuzz for months with news of the dramatic cuts in arts funding being proposed in Great Britain, and the likely adoption of a U.S.-style model that relies much more heavily on private money.

Both sides of this issue rarely if ever meet, with one insisting that educational programs, museums, concerts and the like are a legitimate expenditure of public funds, and the other evoking the specter of a command economy to suggest that artists need to fend for themselves.

That’s an oversimplification for purposes of a note on a blog, but early next month, Carson Kievman and his SoBe Institute of the Arts are planning a get-out-the-arts-cash event for a small, exclusive crowd on Miami Beach who will meet at the penthouse loft of Jason Voigt in The Mirador. Marketing consultant Dirk DeSouza also will host the party, and 200 guests who RSVP to DeSouza will be able to come to the fund-raiser for $40 per person.

According to this Web page, the SoBe Institute needs $40,000 to continue its concerts, theater performances and workshops, and it’s in need of some help for the scholarships it provides to underprivileged children. Those of us who’ve seen children pile into its building for music lessons in the afternoon can see for themselves that the SoBe Institute’s programs are popular, and one hopes that kids will be able to keep doing that for many years to come.

Although the Oct. 2 fund-raiser is being held to benefit the SoBe Institute, it’s emblematic of the kind of thing that perhaps other arts-loving philanthropists will want to emulate for other cultural organizations. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been to concerts or operas that would not have happened without generous donors, and it’s humbling to think of all the art that happens only because prosperous people saw it as their duty to keep good institutions alive and working.

And with the likelihood that the current economic slump will continue for several more years to come, arts groups are going to need them more than ever.

A world premiere: It’ll be a busy weekend at the Lincoln Theatre this weekend, as the New World Symphony premieres Daniel Bernard Roumain’s Dreamers, Dancers and Presidents, on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon; Beethoven’s iconic Fifth Symphony and the Leonore Overture No. 3 round out the bill. It’s a free concert, and tickets for both shows are spoken for.

That Sunday night, duo-pianists Mia Vassilev and Georgian-born Liana Pailodze will tackle the dazzling, hugely difficult Paganini Variations of Witold Lutoslawski on a program with the two-piano sonata Brahms derived from a string quintet that eventually became the Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34. I’ll be at the Roumain concert Sunday afternoon, and I’ll hope for a YouTube clip of the Lutoslawski in the near future.