REGARDING Lord Square, Blackburn needs a major tourist attraction to create a real point of difference and a focus for visitors.

Blackburn and Darwen are the birthplaces of decorative products manufacturing both paint and wallpaper. Why not set up a 'Changing Rooms Experience Centre' where the wealth of history and creative design talent can be shown?

With the right input this could become a major centre for decorative arts and crafts, an educational experience for children, a place where adults could learn DIY properly and experiment with colour, where craft and design students could exhibit and demonstrate their skills in both traditional and computer-aided design working.

It could house a TV broadcast suite for programme-making; room set structures for use by magazine stylists and photographers, conference and seminar facilities as well as having the only major exhibition in Europe on decorative art.

Wallpaper, for instance, is designed and sold around the world with a large proportion of UK manufacture now exported.

Imperial Mill would be an ideal venue. The regeneration of this excellent and historical building is long overdue.

Consider the difference that The Pier project made to Wigan and the excellent renovation of Salt's mill in Saltaire and you get some idea of the potential.

To my recollection, the WPM collection of historical wallpapers is housed unseen at the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester. Sandersons still make hand block printed papers; Crown Lincrusta is in major demand in the United States for restoration work in major buildings.

It could also be a stimulus to attract into the construction industry the large numbers of practical tradesmen required and help the Construction Industry Training Board and major contractors to change attitudes among parents and schoolteachers that careers in painting and decorating, carpentry, joinery, plastering and bricklaying are not suitable jobs for their children.

Accrington and Rossendale College is the only beacon college for construction crafts in the country; Blackburn also has a good reputation. I am sure that local companies like Akzo Nobel, Crown, Graham and Brown and Sandersons would be willing to pool their expertise and join in the debate.

Such a major centre and facilities in Blackburn could become the national focal point for such events. If there is any doubt about likely interest in such a venue for decorative products, just check out the number of television programmes now devoted to the topic and their viewing figures.

Laurence Llewellyn Bowen may not be a regular visitor to Blackburn and Darwen: with such a centre you may not be able to keep him away!

DAVID PRESSLEY, by e-mail.