``We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.`` - Arthur Shaughnessy, Ode
For nearly 30 years, a pleasantly odd and angular building on 215 East High had been home to the ubiquitous signage of Video Editing Services, Inc. If you have ever driven down High or Vine streets throughout the Nineties and Aughts, that strangely specific yet vague name may have created an impression on you. It did me.
When I was completing my college Co-op with a media job working for the University of Kentucky Center for Visualization originally in the neighboring Kentucky Utilities building, I would pause from the documentary I was working on and peer down to the curious building below. What really went on in there? “I know it says editing,” I would think to myself, “but there has to be more.”
Cut to winter of 2014, I found myself entering through the doors of 215 East High Street no longer an curious outsider but as newly minted producer/director. In the decade since I first wondered what transpired behind the cubist walls of Video Editing Services, I had picked up on evidence that a lot more did happen. But, like with most experiences, it wasn’t until I was truly in the fold did I even begin to scratch the surface of it.
Now four years in and serving as President, the best way that I can summarize what happens in this building (now carrying the signage of Media Collaboratory, a continuation of the same storied business) is ‘possibility.’ The possibility to go beyond this address through collaboration and aim to tell your story the way it is meant to be told. The possibility of passing the torch so that a new generation can take a worldly yet fervently proud Kentuckian’s vision and turn it into a lasting legacy; that an employee-owned business can continue to strive to help others grow.
Hopefully, when it is all said and done, it is my hope that this business continues to represent the possibility that one day many years from now, a young person will look up to that Media Collaboratory sign and be inspired to wonder, just like I was when I passed by 215 East High Street.
From our team to yours, welcome to the Media Collaboratory.
Robert Tipton,
President
