Often called the Smithsonian of Country Music, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville is the world’s largest repository of country music artifacts. The museum hosts 1.5 million visitors annually, many of whom are not native English speakers. At the core of the museum is its central, permanent exhibition, Sing Me Back Home: A Journey Through Country Music. The exhibition features artifacts, photographs, archival videos and interactive touchscreens to immerse visitors in the history and sounds of country music. The accompanying audio tour features 50 different stops as it walks visitors through a chronology of country music history. The Tennessee Language Center (TLC), an agency of the UT Institute for Public Service, translated and recorded the audio tour into French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese. It required a team of TLC translators to take the 9,000-word English transcript of the tour and translate it into the target language.
SMART Joins the National Network
The UT SMART Initiative, which stands for Substance Misuse and Addiction Resource for Tennessee, is a new member of the Opioid Solutions Leadership Network, launched by the National Association of Counties in 2022 to bring together county government leaders across the U.S. to share strategies to address the opioid epidemic. This improves SMART’s ability to help Tennessee overcome the opioid crisis and saves lives by enhancing its work as the official partner of the Tennessee Opioid Abatement Council as it provides technical assistance to counties. It also solidifies Tennessee as a leader in this crisis, guaranteeing that successful programs in the Volunteer State are evaluated on the national level.
State Funds Local Planning Agency
The UT Institute for Public Service will receive $2 million recurring funding from the state to establish a dedicated local planning function to assist Tennessee’s cities and counties with economic development, zoning and infrastructure planning. The planning agency will join the institute’s six agencies and one initiative that provide training and consulting to state and local governments, manufacturers and law enforcement. The funding also will allow UT Extension, a branch of the UT Institute of Agriculture, to offer a statewide landowner education program.
