The W.O. Smith/Nashville Community Music School, founded in 1984, is a nonprofit educational institution created for the purpose of making quality music instruction available to talented, interested, deserving children from low income families at the nominal fee of 50 cents a lesson. The school also seeks to encourage student participation in the cultural life of the community through concert attendance and performance. Instruction is provided by a one-hundred member volunteer faculty of area musicians from many elements of the Nashville music scene: studio musicians, symphony players, college professors, public school teachers, church musicians, private teachers and university students. These individuals each donate one to four hours a week to teach their students. Over three hundred fifty students, age 7 to 18, representing academic schools from across Metro Davidson County and the middle Tennessee area, participate in over 500 different courses. Students must qualify for the reduced or free lunch program in the Metro schools to take lessons.