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Taylor Swift Education Center Opens

Swift Donated $4 Million to Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum

The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum's Taylor Swift Education Center officially opened its doors Saturday (Oct. 12) following a ribbon-cutting ceremony and media event. The superstar's $4 million donation, given last year, will further music education in the Nashville community.

"For me, music education is really such an important part of my life," Swift told CMT Hot 20 Countdown at the event. "My life changed so completely when I discovered writing my own songs and playing guitar, and that can't necessarily all be taught to you in school because there aren't enough hours in the day ... enough funding to teach every kid how to play an instrument.

"To put funding behind opportunities for kids to learn to play an instrument or to learn what it is to be a producer or to learn what it is to be a tour manager, figure out what it is to be a professional songwriter, I think that has always been a priority for me," she continued. "Trying to figure out different ways to teach kids about the music industry."

Construction of the 7,500-square-foot education center required an addition to the museum of three classrooms, a learning lab and a children's exhibit gallery. Swift says there are aspects of the learning facility she would have been very excited about as a child.

"There's nothing I love more than putting words together and making them make sense and working with the cadence or the rhymes at the end of them," she admitted. "I think poetry would be my favorite thing because that was always the part that I lived for in school -- English class and, specifically, poetry."

Swift's donation is the single largest gift to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in its 46-year history.

For more, catch CMT Hot 20 Countdown this Saturday and Sunday (Oct. 19-20) at 11 a.m. ET/PT.

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