A leading Melbourne school transforms digital asset management to empower their brand and community

As a school with a rich history and a future-focused approach, MLC produces and curates thousands of images, videos, and design assets each year. These visual stories are essential in showcasing student life, achievements, and the vibrant MLC community to prospective families and the broader public.

The Challenge

Vivian Smith, Brand and Creative Services Manager, leads a dedicated team responsible for upholding the school’s distinctive visual identity and bringing its stories to life through photography, design, and multimedia.

More than just content, this work brings student voice to the fore — capturing authentic moments that reflect the real experiences of girls at MLC. It helps parents see and feel their daughter’s journey now, and offers a powerful glimpse into the opportunities that lie ahead.

With a growing library of over 50,000 images and an increasing demand for high-quality content, MLC needed a system to improve searchability, streamline workflows, and support its commitment to child safety and student agency. Managing photo permissions and finding assets was time-consuming and inefficient. Vivian Smith explains:

  At MLC, every image helps tell the story of our students — their learning, friendships, and achievements. We needed a system that could respect student voice, support child safety, and make it faster and easier to manage our growing library without adding extra workload. It’s about sharing our community’s experience with care, while working more efficiently behind the scenes.

The Results

Today, Canto is an indispensable part of MLC’s creative workflows, supporting daily operations across multiple departments. It has enhanced the way MLC captures and communicates student experiences — helping families feel more connected to school life, while supporting the College’s commitment to innovation, excellence, and meaningful visual storytelling:

• Creative Services: Uploading, managing, and distributing photography and video content
• Communications Team: Sharing documents and marketing materials directly from Canto
• Archivist: Scanning and storing historic images for the college’s records.

The Solution

Canto offered MLC the ability to centralise their visual assets and introduce more efficient processes for their creative team and broader school community.

Key Features Driving Success

Facial Recognition
Canto’s facial recognition technology has significantly improved how MLC manages image permissions — a vital part of upholding child safety and respecting family choices. “We can now quickly and confidently identify images of students whose consent preferences have changed,” Vivian says. “What once took hours of manual cross-checking is now handled in moments, allowing us to act swiftly and responsibly.”

Portals
MLC uses portals to share event photos with families and to provide pre-approved imagery and downloadable artwork for internal and external stakeholders. “It’s a professional and secure way to distribute assets without granting access to the entire library,” Vivian explains.

Smart Tags & Versioning
While their team hasn’t fully explored visual search, smart tags and versioning have simplified managing large numbers of files and updates.

Collections & Share Links
The team uses collections to organise content for projects and share links to distribute images and artwork to media buyers and other partners—eliminating the need for bulky email attachments or duplicate files.

  Canto underpins almost all of our creative work. It’s helped us maintain a high standard of visual storytelling, which is vital for showcasing our vibrant community to current and future families. Canto has become a critical tool for our team and the wider college.

Lessons learned and future plans

Vivian highlights the importance of dedicated management for a DAM system to avoid it becoming a “dumping ground” of assets. As MLC looks to the future, they plan to:

• Refine tagging systems to make searching even more intuitive for staff.
• Explore workspaces for external suppliers to upload content more efficiently.
• Investigate facial recognition for videos, a feature they are eager to activate.

Working with databasics

Vivian appreciates the support from databasics. “Generally, things work as they should, and when we’ve needed help, responses have been good. databasics support has helped us get the most out of Canto.”

Advice for other schools

Vivian’s advice for other schools considering Canto:

"Canto is a powerful tool for managing creative assets, but it needs thoughtful implementation and ongoing oversight."

  In any organisation where every image carries meaning — to your brand, your stakeholders, and your community — having the right systems in place isn’t just helpful, it’s essential.