Can Paisley cut it as a City of Culture? Of course it can, says Cate Devine

FOR DECADES PAISLEY HAS BEEN A BYWORD FOR DECLINE AND DECAY. CATE DEVINE, WHO WAS BORN AND BROUGHT UP THERE, SAYS ITS CITY OF CULTURE BID GIVES HOPE THAT THE ONCE-PROUD TOWN CAN BE REBORN

THERE IS a story in my family I’d never heard before researching this article. Apparently my grandfather used to enthuse about Queen Victoria’s visit to Paisley in 1888, to celebrate the town’s 400th anniversary as a burgh. Despite being a very young boy he remembered it vividly. Not for the crowds lining the streets, or even the Queen, but because he could see his face reflected in the polished black carriage in which the monarch was being transported. My grandfather would have told this story as a blind man, having lost his sight later in life, which only sharpens its impact.

But will my home town’s illustrious past bear any reflection on its bid to be named UK City of Culture 2021?

Paisley used to be grand. Queen Victoria’s links with the town date back to her ancestor Walter Fitzalan, High Steward of Scotland, who built Paisley Abbey in 1163 and was a progenitor of the Stewart royal dynasty.

His son married Marjory Bruce, daughter of Robert the Bruce, and their son became the first of the Stewart monarchs, so Victoria was descended from the Royal House of Stewart.

The monument to Marjory Bruce, erected where she fell from her horse and died, evokes a school-girl memory: we would climb its crazy-paving structure while waiting for the bus home from school, the now demolished and largely forgotten St Margaret’s Convent on Renfrew Road. Along with the school, where my mother was an art teacher, went the walled garden, the nuns’ cemetery, the playing fields, and the tree-lined avenue that led up to them.

Local folklore has it that Victoria eventually turned her back on the town: her statue in Dunn Square, erected in 1901, faces away it; her gaze goes downhill towards the South.

A sense of fading significance has long undermined Paisley and engendered a pervasive lack of self-confidence. There are many today who feel the effects of the neglect and misfortune that over time have been visited upon the town, the largest in Scotland whose population of 76,000 qualifies it to apply for the lucrative city of culture title.

Certainly, the scale and quality of its public buildings is usually found only in cities.

Post-industrial decay has been rife since the Coats thread industry finally petered out in the 1960s, followed by the closure of the Chrysler car factory, Stoddards carpet factory in nearby Elderslie, and the more recent closure of the Ordnance Survey plant in Bishopton, job losses at Babcocks in Renfrew; and now the Chivas whisky bottling plant is moving out. Last year, the Ferguslie Park housing scheme – within walking distance of the town centre, upon which the Paisley 2021 bid is focused – was identified as one of the most deprived places in Scotland: one in three children live in poverty.

One of the main criteria for the UK City of Culture 2021 bid is demonstrable need, and the making of a sufficiently convincing argument that winning will help make a distinct transformational “step change”.

The MP for Paisley, the SNP’s Mhairi Black, describes the bid as “a cry for help”. Paisley 2021 bid director Jean Cameron, who grew up in Ferguslie Park, endorses that. “We really need this,” she said. “We’ve had real challenges, and recent times have

Clockwise from main picture: Jean Cameron, raised in Ferguslie Park, is spearheading the bid to make Paisley the UK City of Culture 2021; the town’s economy has suffered from closure after closure and its centre has been hollowed out by changing...