As the Christmas lights blinked on across Renfrewshire this weekend and groups of wobbly skaters braved Paisley’s outdoor ice rink, the town was entering the final straight in its efforts to become UK city of culture in 2021.

The sole remaining Scottish bid on the shortlist, a fact given added traction after Dundee’s hopes of being the European capital of culture for 2023 were scuppered last week owing to Brexitm, Paisley is also the first town to be shortlisted since the competition was established in 2009.

Despite its title, the competition is also open to larger towns and urban areas, and the Paisley bidders are keen to emphasise the significance of this to the two-thirds of the UK population who live not in cities but in areas that may feel left behind and ready to be convinced of the transformative effect of culture.

In Dunns Square, a few streets south of the wintry festivities, the statues of Thomas and Peter Coats – thread manufacturers who at their height were responsible for making 90% of the world’s sewing yarn – look across the White Cart Water to the 850-year-old abbey, blond sandstone cathedral and Victorian-era town hall.



Evidence of Paisley’s former greatness is all around: the town centre boasts the highest concentration of listed buildings anywhere in Scotland aside from Edinburgh. But so too is evidence of post-industrial decline on the high street. What is not visible but palpable is a rediscovered optimism in a place too often defined in recent years by Ferguslie Park, a housing estate that was once the site of thriving mills and is now the most deprived area in Scotland, according the index of multiple deprivation.

In the context of this competition, culture becomes a shorthand for many things: regeneration, tourism, identity. “North of the border, culture is an expression of who you are,” said John Keenan, the bishop of Paisley. Bid events were about “bringing people together from the perspective of hope”.

Jean Cameron, Paisley 2021’s bid director and a respected arts programmer, most notably for Glasgow’s 2014 Commonwealth Games, grew up in Ferguslie Park. She acknowledged that at the beginning of the bid process “the arts were a four-letter word for many people”.

“But there is a real show and tell by the various projects and now people are defining what culture means on their own doorsteps,” she said. “We talk about culture as the spirit of a place, and if you look at our USPs in terms of our competitors, we know that Paisley people are buddies.” (The origin of the term “buddy” to describe the townsfolk of Paisley is unclear but is believed to be a corruption of the old Scottish term of bodies.)

That Paisley attitude of “come away in” made the town the ideal party-giver, Cameron said. “If you’re going to be the host of the UK’s party in 2021, Paisley people are there as buddies to show our own talents. But we know it would be rude as host to talk about ourselves all year, so absolutely we want to showcase the best of the four nations.”

The local MP, Mhairi Black, who entered parliament at the age of 20 when she beat Douglas Alexander in the 2015 general election, said: “Quite often I think that this constituency is like a micro-version of Scotland. We’ve got pockets of incredible wealth and pockets of incredible deprivation.”

When the bid was first announced, Black admitted, “I cringed a little bit because I could think of all the jokes. I’m glad that I was proved wrong because I started to learn all this history about Paisley that I’d not known, and I’ve seen the buzz it’s created.”

At the point of submitting the bid, Cameron estimates, 40% of Paisley’s population had engaged with the process.

“That cheek by jowl nature of Paisley is true,” Cameron said. “One in three children in Paisley live in poverty. This town is still in decline: since we launched the bid there’s been 1,000 job losses announced, so these things co-exist. We need [to be successful]. The creative industries are the fastest growing sector in the UK and we feel we are tapping into some great creativity now.”

Winning the title – the announcement is due in December – would bring with it some very concrete advantages. There’s already an ambitious £45.7m package of capital investment to transform the town centre and local arts venues. Hosting the 2021 title is expected to create 4,700 jobs over a 10-year period, generate an estimated £172m economic boost, and bring in almost a million visitors in 2021.

The bid has garnered cross-party and cross-sector support, as well as cheerleading by Paisley natives ranging from the deputy speaker of the House of Commons, Eleanor Laing, to the Hollywood actor Gerard Butler.

Butler features in a three-minute film showcasing Paisley’s most celebrated exports, also including Golden Shred marmalade and the Paisley pattern, all rendered in Lego by a stop-motion animator, Morgan Spence.

Spence, whose first professional commission was a music video for the DJ Paul Oakenfold when he was only 14, exemplifies the creative and ambitious Paisley spirit that the 2021 bid commends.

“I think with ‘culture’ there is a stereotype that it’s for older people,” said Spence. now 18. “But there’s so much that goes on in Paisley for young people too. In the past we’ve always been competing against Glasgow, but there’s a scene developing in Paisley now and I wanted to do my part.”