Television personality and producer Ryan Seacrest, foreground left, and singer Taylor Swift, center, join young patients at a ribbon cutting ceremony for the new Seacrest Studio, Friday, March 18, 2016, at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tenn. The fully functioning studio allows patients to record, do interviews, play songs and broadcast to the rooms in the hospital. AP
NASHVILLE, Tennessee — Pop star Taylor Swift made a surprise appearance at a Nashville, Tennessee, children’s hospital to help “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest open a broadcast studio for patients.
Swift on Friday met with children at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University Medical Center following the ribbon cutting on the new Seacrest Studio built at the hospital.
She told the crowd that she visited one of the now 10 studios that Seacrest’s foundation had built at children’s hospitals across the country and wanted to be involved when he opened the latest one in Music City.
“What I saw when I went there was an opportunity for the kids to find excitement and to express their creativity and to learn about what it is to create content, whether you would like to make your own radio show or whether you want to record,” Swift said. “It was so exciting to see the excitement that it brought to this one hospital.”
It wasn’t the first time that Swift made a surprise visit to a children’s hospital: She previously visited others, including Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island. She said she has visited the children at the Nashville facility before and the studio gives the city’s many singers and songwriters a place to reach all the children at the hospital.
“Can you imagine the artists and the songwriters and the entertainers who are going to be stopping by the hospital?” she said.
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The fully functioning studio lets children learn how to record, do interviews, broadcast to the rooms in the hospital and play songs.
Seacrest said he hears back from patients all over the country who have felt inspired by the studios.
“I get the coolest letters and emails from parents and kids talking about how they want to be a tech engineer or they want to be a deejay or they really want to be in music in some capacity,” Seacrest said. “And this gives them a chance to technically learn how to do all of it too.”