Swift Opens Education Center During Weekend Ceremonies

Pictured (L-R): Kyle Young, Taylor Swift, Mayor Karl Dean. Photo: John Russell.

Taylor Swift played tour guide at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum this weekend, ushering media and area high school students through the new $4 million dollar education center that bears her name on Saturday (Oct. 12). The 7,000-square-foot center includes three classrooms. A “wet” classroom with a utility floor will be used for the museum’s Make Letterpress Art with Hatch Show Print program. The BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee Health Foundation Learning Lab with built-in technology and video conference technology will aid distance learning and outreach programs. An interactive exhibit gallery is slated to open in March 2014.

“I really appreciate the Country Music Hall of Fame opening the classrooms first,” Swift said prior to cutting the ribbon to open the facility. “They wanted to make sure it was an effective learning space—that was priority number one.

“A lot of my music education happened outside of school,” the singer noted. “It happened because my parents were willing to drive me to countless children’s theater and local theater productions or take me to guitar lessons. I’m so glad this is a space where there will be demonstrations and instruments that kids can try without having to spend money and buy one for themselves. They want to come here, and they want to learn. They want to hear a songwriter talk about what it is to really craft a song.”

Taylor Swift at the ribbon cutting at the Country Music Hall of Fame. Photo: Royce DeGrie, Getty Images.

Seven outstanding high school students were selected from Metro Nashville Public Schools to attend the private ceremony. They were joined by dignitaries, music business executives, museum donors, education leaders and media members.

During the 30-minute ceremony, Swift presented the museum with a custom-made Taylor K65ce acoustic-electric twelve-string guitar, made largely of Hawaiian koa wood and featuring inlaid mother-of-pearl on its fretboard, for display in the museum. “This is the first guitar that I obsessed over and ended up buying,” she remarked. “I wrote some of my earliest songs on it when I was 13 and 14.”

Swift, 23, has a long association with the museum. She signed her record contract there as a teenager, and gave one of her first public performances on the building’s plaza. The museum houses a popular Taylor Swift stand-alone multi-media exhibition. The 2012 exhibit Taylor Swift: Speak Now – Treasures from the World Tour was the first-ever of its kind, paving the way for subsequent contemporary exhibits.