I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to volunteer through the Zooniverse platform this past semester. With the restrictions revolving around Covid-19, I know for many students and myself it was difficult to find places where we could go to physically give back. So I am so happy that I could still contribute to society even though it was from my computer.

Since I am huge art lover, I decided to do choose the Zooniverse project called “Drawing Knowledge.” This required you to engage with the Getty Museum’s extraordinary drawings collection by sharing your knowledge and ideas about the pieces. We were asked to focus on the subject in particular and to tag different terms that could be used to describe each painting/drawing we were shown. Additionally, we were asked to use a sentence to further describe the subject of each art piece. I would do this for 30 minutes every few days throughout the semester.

Furthermore, the data collected for the project will be “reviewed by a team of subject specialists who will use this information to improve the search function on the Getty website, which will make the collection more accessible to online users.”

I have never done this kind of service before and it was a bit of a strange idea to me when I first started, however I found comfort in knowing that this would help artists of our past. Being a theatre student and artist, I know that there is much stigma and under-appreciation for art in general, so I am glad I was able to do some justice by helping in this small way.

By participating in this project I was able to better educate myself on the importance of art and I gained a better appreciation for the artists who have literally sculpted our history.

I 10 out of 10 recommend creating a Zooniverse account if you ever want to volunteer in an easy and fun way that you can do right from the comfort of your our home!

Of course next semester I plan on going back to volunteering in person, but I am very grateful to have had this chance to experience a new way of serving!

Post author Bailey Broome is a theatre major who recently completed her second year as a Luckyday Scholar.