Paisley has lost out in the race to be named the next UK City of Culture.
Coventry beat the other shortlisted towns and cities – Paisley, Stoke-on-Trent, Sunderland and Swansea – for the 2021 title.
The announcement was made in current City of Culture Hull during the BBC's The One Show.
The competition is held every four years, with Derry-Londonderry the first winner in 2013.
Winning the title brings major investment.
Despite the title, the award is not restricted only to cities and Scottish representative Paisley was the first town to make the final shortlist.
Leaders of Paisley 2021 said the bid was part of a wider plan to "transform its future" by promoting a heritage and cultural story around its historic thread industry and the globally-recognised Paisley Pattern design.
David Watt, chief executive of Arts & Business Scotland, said: “This is obviously disappointing news but there is still a fantastic opportunity to harness the momentum and collective good will built up over the period of Paisley’s UK City of Culture campaign.
"In particular, many local businesses have already shown an active commitment to get behind the bid and to work in partnership with the local arts and heritage communities to deliver an outstanding programme of cultural activity in Paisley.
"Many elements of that programme could still happen. Arts & Business Scotland’s Culture & Business Fund Scotland stands ready to offer match funding to local businesses supporting local cultural projects in and around Paisley.
"We will be continuing discussions with local businesses and cultural organisations in the months ahead with a view to hopefully making that happen.”
Phil Redmond, chairman of the Independent Expert Advisory Panel, said:
“Once again the process has highlighted the depth and strength of culture across the UK. That made it difficult choosing a winner, but I would like to congratulate Coventry and I am sure they will build on the legacy of Derry-Londonderry and Hull and bring about a transformational change in 2021.
“For those that weren’t successful this time, I hope, as has happened in other places, that they will look to the future and build on the wider cultural partnerships they have created.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel