Cotton thread manufacturing has made Paisley well-known. Anchor Mill is a finishing mill in Paisley on the White Cart River. It was designed in 1886 by architects Woodhouse & Morley. In 1980, a working mill featuring red brick exterior and arched windows was designated as a listed building. June 2003 saw the start of the conversion into 60 opulent apartments and commercial spaces. It was the perfect choice for our first set of photo cards because it is just one of the town’s many stunning architectural features. Each participant took a different angle of the building and selected their favourite view to create the card set, which we intend to release later this year. We have had a great time taking pictures of the building from various perspectives, and we will share a few of them with you right now for your enjoyment.
Did you know that we set ourselves a monthly theme and try to relate all our Instagram posts to it for the month? It gives us a challenge and helps us to focus our thoughts on producing photographs that positively reflect on Paisley. It provides fun for our regular followers to see what we come up with.
Our documentary-type photographs usually tell us a story, bring out some kind of emotional response or fix a time and place in history.
This month, we are asking, “What is Paisley to you?”. As humans, we all create fond memories of a time and a place that is as individual as we are.
Let us know what Paisley means to you. Here are some examples of the town’s heritage, people, and cultural scene.
‘Have you ever seen a Photo Fence? Here at Picturing Paisley, we have presented several of these for the enjoyment of our Paisley Community. Currently, we are exhibiting on the railings outside the entrance to Barshaw Park, one of our well-established and much-cherished green spaces in Paisley.
This is the second time that we have used this particular space for the exhibition of our work, and we are hoping to make this an annual event as it coincides with a festival hosted across the month by another community group in the town. The Festival is known as “Feel Good February” and is a very welcome month of activities designed to sweep away the winter blues and welcome spring back into our lives. A perfect fusion of partnership working!
Our fences have a very basic presentation of A4 laminated photographs and are secured with tie wraps. While this may appear to lack finesse, it is a very practical and inexpensive way for us, who are totally self-funded, to show photographs to the general public to stimulate conversation, enjoyment, memories and creativity in everyone.
We have themed this particular exhibition around the magnificent Anchor Thread Mill, which sits on the banks of the White Cart River and has been converted into luxury flats. It reminds us every day of the town’s past heritage and industry. The photographs present different views and angles of the exterior of the building.
We encourage you, if possible, to visit our exhibition, which runs from 1st – 29th February, and to have a walk in our beautiful park, or to travel from there into Paisley to view this magnificent building for yourself. Enjoy!
Thank you to all of our friends and supporters for your likes, loves and interactions over the past year. We wish everyone a happy and peaceful Christmas and New Year.
We look forward to joining you all again in 2024 to keep Paisley on the map and raise the profile of our local businesses and communities.
In the meantime, here is a little recap of some of our best moments from 2023.
We are excited to bring you the news that we have launched a new Instagram account, @picturing_scotland, where we hope to bring you photographs that reflect life in our wonderful country of Scotland. This account will differ from our themed @picturing_paisley account as we explore our photography talent and interests in the place we call home. We look forward to connecting with you all through this platform.
