Guelph - Following upon the success of last year’s virtual open house, Guelph Arts Council will once be participating in the spOtlight: Celebrate Our Artists Weekend June 5 to 7, 2009 by again hosting a guelpharts / wellingtonarts Virtual Open House. The event will also celebrate the 5th anniversary of this innovative web portal which is dedicated to connecting local arts and heritage organizations and individual artists with their audience(s), with each other, and with resources that will aid them in the creation, presentation and preservation of art and heritage.

In thus putting the website’s 150+ member artists and arts organziations in the spotlight, the virtual open house will enable visitors to learn more about and gain a better appreciation of the diversity and breadth of artistic output in Guelph and Wellington County. Last year, the site recorded more than three times the normal number of site visitors in the days leading up to and during the weekend itself, and expectations are that these numbers and therefore exposure for area artists will only increase.

The open house will be one of 15 Guelph area events that will be part of the 2009 spOtlight festival, an initiative of Ontario Arts Council and the Ontario Ministry of Culture in Cambridge, Guelph, Kitchener-Waterloo and Stratford. A continuation of the pilot project offered in 2008, this weekend of free activities and events aims to showcase the artists and arts organizations in these communities, to connect them with the public and to shed light on the creative process. The impetus for the spOtlight festival came from the Government of Ontario’s 2007 Status of the Artist’s Act which declared the first weekend in June to be Celebrate Our Artists Weekend. The province of Ontario is home to the largest percentage of artists in Canada.

For more information about the virtual open house, stay tuned to guelpharts.ca or wellingtonarts.ca, or contact Guelph Arts Council at 519-836-3280 or gac@sentex.net. Details about other 2009 spOtlight festival events in other areas can be found at www.spotlightfestival.ca.