St. Thomas’ Playful Learning Lab worked in collaboration with the Grammy award-winning band OK Go on a movement called “Art Together Now.”

The movement, led by St. Thomas junior Taylor Casey and sophomore Clare Howard, challenges people to create collaborative art with others to show community and a sense of togetherness.

“And we were thinking, ‘What if we took this song “All Together Now,” which is about everyone being together but apart, and have everybody participate from around the world,” Casey said.

In May 2020, OK Go released a music video titled “All Together Now.” The song, as stated in a letter by lead singer Damien Kulash, was inspired by the cheers for frontline health workers during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In OK Go’s music video they showed that they were in their separate houses and they’re making music together,” Casey said. “That’s what we wanted to do, is make music with the world.”

The Playful Learning Lab, a St. Thomas research lab that creates creative, fun experiences for K-12 students, put out coloring sheets on their website that people as far as Thailand have colored and submitted back to the PLL. The coloring sheets are then scanned and will be used in music videos that the PLL is making.

“It’s pretty cool to see the full range of human ability in Dropbox form,” said Howard, who is arranging the music for the videos. “We’re making five different music videos, five different versions of the song.”

According to Howard, the “Art Together Now” movement had received 17,000 submissions by the March 1 deadline. These submissions are the backbone of the project, with 12 drawings used per frame in the videos. The videos also include choral, band and string arrangements, all arranged for the videos by Howard, a music major.

“(Casey’s) really good at organizing all the files that we have received for music, she went through and put what instrument it was, age, name and contact information,” Howard said. “I’ve just been hunched over in my room giving myself back problems because I can’t get this one string part right.”

Casey and Howard have the support of music professor Doug Orzolek, who is also the music education adviser for the Playful Learning Lab.

“I’ve been helping them coordinate things and put some arrangement pieces together,” Orzolek said. “I’ve also worked with Taylor to coordinate all the submissions. I’ve just been kind of a helper and a coordinator.”

“Art Together Now” released six videos with hundreds of contributions from elementary schools, groups like the Napa Girl Scout troop and people across the world.

“Someone in the lab looked up what the biggest collaborative project was, and it was like 1000 people,” said Howard. “We’ve got that beat by 17 times, 17,000 people plus all the musicians.”

According to the Guiness Book of World Records’ website, the record is 1879 people who collaborated on a film in 2011.

Sam Larson can be reached at lars4378@stthomas.edu.
Cam Kauffman can be reached at kauf8536@stthomas.edu.