BY the time French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte set up the 1806 trade blockade that halted the supply of silk to Britain, Paisley had already established itself as a textile centre home to thousands of weavers.

But that attempt to cripple British trade triggered an innovation that would turn the town into a manufacturing powerhouse. Within years, Paisley was home to the third largest corporation in the world and its eponymous pattern had become iconic.

More than 200 years on from Bonaparte’s blockade, the town no longer produces the cloth but local leaders hope to pull on those threads to weave a new story after years of commercial decline and industrial drift forced a strategic rethink of what makes a town. The result is an overarching regeneration plan to make culture king in the home of John Byrne, Gerry Rafferty, David Tennant and Paolo Nutini.

This week Renfrewshire Council announced the beginning of construction work on the town centre campus that will deliver a £42 million museum. There’s work too to transform the historic town hall into a £22m all-singing, all-dancing venue that’ll attract superstar quality acts. And there’s hope that a revamped Abbey Close, which the town hall opens onto and where Robert the Bruce’s daughter Marjorie lies in the medieval kirk, will become an Instagram destination that’ll get retail and hospitality tills ringing.

If it works, it’ll provide a blueprint for beleaguered towns across Scotland and beyond. And if it doesn’t? Councillor Lisa-Marie Hughes, chair of Renfrewshire Leisure, says it won’t fail. “We have got all the ingredients we need to make this a success,” she says. “We know we can do it.”

The museum project was revealed as part of Paisley’s 2021 City of Culture bid. That title went to Coventry but the vision of a culture-led renaissance remains in a town where the thread trade is written into street names and landmarks. The new museum will be created in a reimagining of the old facility built thanks to Sir Peter Coats of the eminent J&P Coats.

Formed in a merger of the once-rival companies of the Coats and Clarks families, it had more than 50,000 staff worldwide, 25,000 shareholders and a market value of around £22m. By the 1910s, only US Steel and Standard Oil had higher market capitalisation and, now based in Uxbridge, Coats remains a multinational leader in sewing thread and supplies.

While the Coats name stayed on the paperwork, it was the ingenuity of Patrick Clark that really made the success possible after that French blockade. He developed a new method of twisting fine cotton yarns into thread smooth and strong enough to be used in looms. That mattered because Bonaparte’s action meant mills could nolonger get their hands on the silk that had been needed. Expansion to the US followed and money flowed into buildings like the museum, designed by John Honeyman and later extended by his partner John Keppie and assistant Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

The neighbouring Coats Observatory and Coats Memorial Church help give just some sense of how thread made Paisley as much as Paisley made thread. The town centre has 125 listed buildings, 17 of them category A. Yet more have been lost to mid-century modernisation projects and many of those that remain have suffered years of neglect. Some, latterly used as retail units, lie vacant.

The National:

Many big brands that used to sell here – Topshop, Waterstones, The Body Shop, M&S – have moved to out-of-town retail parks and shopping centres and the high street’s two malls – the Paisley Centre and the Piazza – also have occupancies. It’s a far cry from the peak of the late 80s and early 90s and there have been questions about why the council doesn’t do more.

ALASDAIR Morrison, its head of economy and development, says it owns just three buildings in the town centre and doesn’t set the business rates. Some of the owners, he says, have bought without realising how much it’ll cost to renovate units for profitable sale or let, others can’t get the high values they want. Yet others have been converted to flats, one is now home to the Secret Collection, a treasure trove of publicly owned artefacts and yet another will become a new learning and cultural hub housing library services.

Putting public services in the middle of the most prominent thoroughfare is a statement of intent, says Morrison, but also a practical move. “If you’ve got footfall, you’ve got business,” he says. “This is part of a long journey for Paisley. It can’t be done overnight – it’s not done overnight for anywhere. The council only has access to so many levers. What we know is that where there is public investment there is a ripple effect and private investment follows.”

Paisley’s commercial decline, Hughes says, has followed on from the industrial decline that saw the mills shut and other big employers – marmalade maker Robertsons, chemical plant Ciba-Geigy, spirits firm Chivas – move out. “It’s similar to a lot of towns,” she says. “What’s unique is that we’ve placed culture at the heart of our regeneration. It’s about creating that really unique offer of a great museum and unique events on the back of thousands of years of history.

“I’m a kid who grew up with not very much money. Going to museums changed my outlook on life and I want to do that for other people. I’m also a punk kid who spent her time going to gigs. I want to see those at the town hall and I want us to be the people Beyonce phones when she comes to Scotland and wants to do a smaller gig. We can do cinemas, weddings, family events, tea dances. We can do it all. It’s going to be amazing.”

Architect Matthew Wilkinson of specialists AL_A says it’s that ambition that drew his practice in. It’s worked everywhere from London to Lisbon and previous clients include the V&A. They only take on “exceptional projects”, he says. “We look to find the gems.

“This is a non-national museum writing a brief that’s way more ambitious and radical than national and international museums. That was really exciting to us. The potential for what this project can do for the wider town is huge. It makes it hard work. Everyone is trying to do more than we probably can so we are trying to the best out of absolutely everything.”

That includes the removal of a 70s extension and the remodelling of indoor spaces at the museum, plus the creation of a new entrance and outdoor garden linking to the observatory. The result will be more accessible and bigger than before, increasing gallery space by more than 25% to allow museum star Buddy the lion – a favourite for generations of visitors – to be joined by artefacts from across centuries and cultures. Paisley boasts an impressive collection of work by Scottish colourists, prized ceramics, Syrian artefacts and pieces from the Pacific, plus a collection of those locally-woven shawls.

READ MORE: The threads weaving together Paisley and a Catalan village

"YOU really only get to do a project like this once in a century,” says project director Kirsty Devine. “This is not about getting to day one, it’s about 10 years after opening.

“Paisley is so much more than a pattern. We have a global reach.”

The story behind that motif is amongst those set to be put on display. It was imported from ancient Persia and India throughout Europe by the silk trade and became synonymous with this one Scottish town due to its textile dominance. Against a backdrop of the re-examination of colonialism and imperialism, the story will be told carefully – Devine’s staff have undergone unconscious bias and critical whiteness training and are working with groups representing specific groups on how to treat collections related to Australia, the Pacific Islands and more. In the 80s, one of the museum’s most prominent displays was of a collection of branded items from Robertsons featuring its golliwog logo. There are conversations going on now about how to handle this. “That’s in living memory for people,” Devine says.

“We have a responsibility to explore the ethics and nuances of that collection. The museum provides that platform for debate. Our values are around being bold, being radical, not being afraid to look at a whole range of topics. It’s about making sure there’s an integrity in the storytelling.”