ARTS DC was a CETA arts program that employed over 300 theater artists, musicians, painters, dancers, poets, and other artists and arts workers in over 100 District of Columbia theaters, dance companies, galleries, music ensembles, and other arts organizations from 1977 to 1982. Artists who were employed in ARTS DC-funded jobs reflect on their ARTS DC experience, how the ARTS DC job affected their artistic careers and lives, and the impact of the program on the DC arts community. Oral history is an ideal tool to connect the stories of individual artists with the larger historical narrative of the DC arts community and of federal support of arts employment going back to the Work Projects Administration of the 1930s, and to document how the District’s use of federal CETA funds for arts employment was different from that of other cities. This project was created as part of the D.C. Oral History Collaborative, a citywide initiative to train community members in oral history skills, fund new and ongoing oral history projects, connect volunteers with oral history projects, and publicize existing oral history collections. The D.C. Oral History Collaborative is a project of D.C. Public Library, HumanitiesDC, and the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. Learn more about the DC Oral History Collaborative on the HumanitiesDC website.