The Taylor Swift Education Center opened last weekend at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, thanks in part to a generous $4 million donation Taylor made to the Hall last year.  For Taylor, the Hall of Fame will always hold a special place in her heart because it’s where she signed her record deal when she was just 15 years old.  And now, she’s thrilled that it will be a place where kids can go and learn about music and its history and how it’s created.

Taylor was fortunate to have access to many musical learning opportunities as a child but she realizes not all children are that fortunate.  But now The Taylor Swift Education Center will provide unique learning opportunities to kids who might not otherwise have them.  “There will be demonstrations and instruments that kids can try without having to spend money and buy one for themselves,” explains Taylor.  “If they want to come here and they want to learn or they want to hear a songwriter talk about what it is to really craft a song – the fact that that can happen here is really unbelievable.”

It was a priority for Taylor and the Museum to open the classrooms first so that the learning opportunities could begin right away, and then in March 2014 an interactive exhibit gallery will be added to the education center.  Before Taylor cut the ribbon to officially open the center she donated a special piece of her musical history to the Hall of Fame.  She explained that it was, “the first guitar that I obsessed over and I ended up buying.  And I wrote some of my earliest songs on it when I was 13 and 14.  It’s a 12-string Koa Taylor guitar.”

Taylor is currently in South Africa filming the movie The Giver with Meryl Streep and Jeff Bridges, and she says she is constantly working on the follow-up to her Red album, which she will release in fall 2014.

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Taylor Swift – learning opportunities  :46

“For me, I would learn about music in school but there are only so many hours in the day and they can only focus on so many things, and a lot of my music education happened outside of school.  It happened because my parents were willing to drive me to countless children’s theater, local theater productions or take me to guitar lessons.  And I’m so glad that this is becoming a space where that’s readily available, and there will be demonstrations and instruments that kids can try without having to spend money and buy one for themselves.  If they want to come here and they want to learn or they want to hear a songwriter talk about what it is to really craft a song – the fact that that can happen here is really unbelievable.”