• Play Together is a 501c3 registered non-profit organization dedicated to supporting artistic collaboration and art education for students in Chicago.

  • Our goal with this project is to empower students to create art by giving them an engaging artistic experience collaborating directly with established Chicago artists.

  • For this project, Play Together partnered with Merit School of Music.

    Merit received the original mural from Nikko Washington, as well as early access to be able to use this project as a part of their music and arts curriculum.

    Proceeds from the sale of any of the 3 released NFTs will benefit the artists (Nico & Nikko), Merit School of Music, and Play Together to fund future projects equally.

    Merit School of Music is a non-profit music conservatory and school in Chicago, Illinois, United States. 70 percent of Merit students receive some form of financial aid, as Merit is committed to helping to remove barriers to high quality music education. Virtually 100 percent of Merit graduates go on to college after graduation.

  • The “winning” submissions will be selected by Nico Segal and Nikko Washington directly, after they review all submissions for the project.

    1. If your work is selected by Nico or Nikko as one of their top 3 favorite pieces, you will be contacted by Play Together.

    2. You’ll be asked to confirm that you’d like to have your work featured alongside Nikko’s artwork and Nico’s music as one of the 3, limited-edition “NFTs” that Play Together is releasing as a part of this collaboration.

    3. If you confirm, your work will be released as an NFT. All costs and logistics for this will be handled by the Play Together team. If you decline, we will move on to select the next up artist to feature in the NFT, but your work can still be featured in the online gallery on the Play Together website.

    4. You’ll receive a $500 scholarship in the form of a check or e-check that you can use for your continued arts education, for classes, supplies, or whatever you need for school right now.

  • If your work is one of the 3 music submissions selected by Nico as his favorites, or one of the top 3 art submissions selected by Nikko as his favorites, you will receive a $500 scholarship.

    This scholarship will be sent to you in the form of a check or e-check. The scholarship may be used at your discretion for any resources that help further your art education, including; art classes, art programs, music or art supplies, studio time, music or art lessons, gallery submission fees, etc.

    If you are underage, the check will be in your name but you will need a parent or guardian’s support to deposit it.

  • An NFT, which stands for “non-fungible token” is a format of digital artwork. These digital artworks use the same underlying technology as cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, which allow a person to prove that they really “own” a piece of digital art.

    Unlike a static image, NFT can be multi-media. For our final three NFTs we release, they will combine the Nico Segal’s music with the selected musical submission, and flip between Nikko Washington’s artwork and the selected art submission.

  • If the NFT is purchased by a collector, the proceeds will be split between the two Play Together artists on this project (Nico Segal and Nikko Washington), Merit School of Music to support music scholarships for students, and Play Together, to help fund future projects and arts scholarships. The funds will be split equally between these parties to invest back into the arts community in Chicago.

    The participants whose submissions are selected to be featured in the NFT will instead receive an upfront scholarship of $500, to ensure you receive compensation for your artwork up front.

  • While Nico and Nikko will each be selecting 3 of their most favorite submissions to be featured in three final NFT artworks, every submission will be looked at and reviewed by the artists.

    All of the submissions they are excited about will appear in an online gallery on the Play Together website.

    If your work is displayed on the Play Together website, and you would like it to no longer appear, please email our team at Derek@playtogether.co to request it be removed.

  • We recommend downloading Audacity, which is a free music production software that you can use to interact with the music stems or final song that Nico provided.

    If you’d like to do everything using your phone, there are a number of free or low cost music editing apps available through the App store.

    If you want to keep it super simple, a backup option for creating your musical submission is by using a Voice Memo on the phone. Before recording to find a quiet spot in your house, like a carpeted closet, to help cut down on echo.

    If you need any help with your musical submission, please email Derek@playtogether.co.

    • If you are working digitally, we recommend working in the RGB color space, since the selected submissions will ultimately be presented as a piece of digital art (NFT)

    • If you work on paper, be sure to take a very high quality photograph or scan of your work.

      • The Google Photo Scanner App is an excellent phone-based scanner tool.

    • Get your artwork into an image file on the computer or in your phone so it can be uploaded.

      • Ensure your image is smaller than 20MB.

      • Save out your file in the RGB color space.

    If you need help, please contact Derek@playtogether.co.

  • Please contact derek@playtogether.co for support.

  • After submitting your artwork, you share rights with Play Together to be able to display your artwork or music on our website gallery, as well as on social media, videos, or other media to promote and share this project. You still retain rights to your creative works to use it or sell it how you see fit.

    You also grant Play Together limited rights to be able to release an NFT using your work- but this term will only apply if you are one of the 3 selected music submissions or one of the 3 selected art submissions.

    Please review the full terms and conditions of the project here before submitting.

    By submitting your artwork to the project through our upload form, you’ll be asked agree to these terms.

    If you submit your artwork or music via Tik Tok and are one of the selected artists, we will reach out to request that you fill out a consent form to make sure you’re comfortable with the full terms of the project before we share or use to use your art in any way.