Visible Year 9: Into the City

In the summer of 2008, Visible Music College moved from our original, challenging metal building in Lakeland, Tennessee "Into the City" of Memphis. Our campaign was called, "Into the City" and our new space was chosen but not yet ready to move in. So, we joined Lifelink Memphis at 1015 South Cooper in their new church facility in a 99-year-old formerly Methodist church. The small church that had supported Visible from its inception was moving into Midtown under new leadership and appreciated the college helping to build out rooms and tackle issues of an old building together. The students loved the new access to the coolest walkable neighborhoods and, although it was several miles away, the newly constructed almost Downtown student housing condos. The Days Inn (or “Daesen” in band name form) was a thing of the past.

When you embrace a new location, you grow together fast and hard.

Visible welcomed 40+ new students this year of transition and it was a true diversity of talent, origin, genre, and purpose. Just like being in the city with people of all kinds and learning to grow together, the Christmas record and show was full of a lot of talent and the daily life of the college seemed more solid now that we were in a multi-story church building and a multi-story housing complex in a major city. Students shared rides, Zak McQueen broke a would-be assailant’s arm (right? this happened?) while jogging, everyone at at Young Avenue Deli, and we recorded music in the basement where Johnny Cash had started his career. We began doing “chores” together and picked up and cleaned up weekly as a large “family” in the middle of a challenging neighborhood with so many great staff to lead.

With new territory comes new problems.

Our dependence on God would be put to the test again as one donor had helped the school a couple of years before and now we were in a campaign to build out a multi-million dollar campus on Madison Avenue. But the first thing was first - maintain and even expand the services to the students in the building. From the lovely old theater-style auditorium to the faux-grimy underworld of The Abbey basement rock venue, we made it our home. Visible worked with the church to be a positive force with Memphis events, serving the community, and caring for over 100 young creatives in multiple sites. Even today, as we regularly work with at least two of the “new students of 2008” as grown adults, the many stories of triumph, creative work, and overcoming resonate across the decade(s).

May we go into the city to represent Jesus Christ in culture.