The fourth annual Georgetown University Arts Week started March 27 with a series of shows, events and activities designed to celebrate and shed light on the artistic community on campus.

This year’s Arts Week marks the return of the program following an absence last year, due to a lack of organization, according to Arts Week Head Coordinator Ari Goldstein (SFS ’18).

The weeklong event includes a range of activities from a capella performances and film screenings to blackout poetry and art-centred discussions. Various artistic groups on campus such as Georgetown University Collective of Creative Individuals and female arts magazine Bossier will partake in events this week.

The Georgetown University Student Association Arts Policy Team, the department of performing arts, Students of Georgetown, Inc. and GUSA Fund are sponsoring the weeklong event. GUSA has been working since last spring to prepare this year’s Arts Week.

GUSA Arts Policy Team Chair Katherine Mitchell-Rosengarten (COL ’17) said Arts Week looks to unify the variety of voices involved in the arts on campus.

“Everyone has the capacity to create, no matter their level of expertise or experience. Art is — and should be — for everyone. In that capacity, Arts Week functions, ultimately, as an invitation to everyone to join in the arts community and make our voice, the voice of the arts at Georgetown, even louder and even more united,” Mitchell-Rosengarten wrote in an email to The Hoya.

Goldstein, who was chief of staff in former President Enushe Khan (MSB ’17) and Vice President Chris Fisk’s (COL ’17) administration, said Arts Week is unique due to its inclusion of both artistic and nonartistic communities on campus.

“I think what has sustained Arts Week over several years has been a belief that the arts should be accessible to everyone, not just people involved in the arts community already — and it’s been so wonderful to see that vision come to fruition as more and more people utilize Arts Week as an invitation in to the arts at Georgetown,” Goldstein wrote in an email to The Hoya.

Caroline Barnes (COL ’19), who has helped organize Arts Week, said Arts Week is important to showcase the fairly underrepresented arts community on campus.

“Last year, as I was participating in shows through Mask and Bauble, I recognized how dedicated and amazing, yet unknown, the small pockets of arts communities were here on campus,” Barnes wrote in an email to The Hoya. “I was familiar with GUSA’s work, but at the time was only a policy general member sitting on the arts policy team meetings.”

According to Barnes, GUSA’s vision behind Arts Week is to provide an opportunity for members of the Georgetown community to share their creativity.

“Our ideas centered around created a community, a physical space, where everyone could be aware of all the hidden talent and art that is sometimes repressed, neglected or overshadowed here at GU with all the hustle-and-bustle and people’s need to feel almost normalized and ‘practical’ within such an institutional setting,” Barnes said.

The Georgetown University Independent Film Society is showing the film Momento as part of Arts Week to promote the importance of filmmaking on campus. Film Society President Chad Davis (COL ’19) explained the significance behind the choice of film for their screening this week.

“During Arts Week on Thursday night at 8 p.m. we are having a screening of ‘Momento,’ which is a film directed by Cristopher Nolan, but it is based on a short story that is written by his brother Jonathon Nolan when he was student here at Georgetown so it kind of holds a lot of significance to the Georgetown arts culture in general,” Davis said.

Davis said the nature of Georgetown can make it difficult for the artistic community to flourish.

“Because of the professional nature of Georgetown it makes it really hard for art to succeed here,” Davis said. “It is almost like people who are really passionate about their art like poets, film makers, photographers, musicians and painters are not necessarily outsiders, they definitely fit in but represent this not-normal aspect of Georgetown and I don’t think there is necessarily much the university administration can do.”