A Chicago musician and visual artist are working alongside a local nonprofit to inspire the next generation of artists. 

Musician Nico Segal and contemporary artist Nikko Washington are engaging young artists in a creative partnership with nonprofit Play Together. The collaboration is encouraging students to create either artwork or music based on prompts. 

For Washington, that’s a mural now up at the Merit School of Music, and for Segal, it’s a musical composition.

“I added a theme to it of this duality that I felt in his piece. There’s a character and a shadow like character,” Segal said. “So in my music piece, I added a second section that feels like a reprise of the first half of the piece. Nico and Nikko, there’s a lot of themes of duality that I wanted to showcase in the music.” 

“The mural itself I wanted to capture a young energy on where I was mentally as a kid and learning new stuff for painting or music techniques,” Washington said. “Wanted to show that energy in the form of interpreting music as paint strokes.”

Selected winners will receive a $500 scholarship and will be featured in a piece of digital art known alongside the work the pair created for this creative competition. Applications are being accepted on a rolling basis. For more information, visit playtogether.co/nico-nikko.