The second phase of the Winter School 2026 will take place at The Glasgow School of Art’s Highlands & Islands campus on the Altyre Estate at Forres from 11 – 18 April.
The Winter School is an international and cross-cultural experience aimed at undergraduate, Masters and PhD students from around the world. This annual event brings together students and professors of design, engineering, computer science and social sciences to explore a contemporary challenge (combining ecological, technological and social dimensions) through an intensive project experience. The two-part workshop requires students to reconsider their disciplinary contribution in exploring an interdisciplinary challenge and asks them to work collaboratively with others to reflect critically on their own local situations and produce innovative outcomes, responses and proposals for change. The significance of the Winter School’s programme, now entering its eleventh edition in 2026, is highlighted by the announcement of the QS 2026 World University Subject Rankings, where The Glasgow School of Art has climbed to number eight in the world top 10, solidifying its position as an international leader in art and design education. This achievement follows a remarkable 11-year streak of maintaining a top 20 ranking internationally.
The Winter School is a collaboration with Köln International School of Design (KISD, Germany), the University of Central Asia (UCA, Kyrgyzstan), The Academy of Fine Arts & Design in Bratislava (AFAD, Slovakia), and Elisava, Barcelona School of Design and Engineering. Additionally, each year guests from international schools and universities are invited to participate. This year’s guest lecturers include Prof. Philipp Heidkamp, Köln International School of Design; Dr Soheil Ashrafi, University of Central Asia; Prof Marcel Benčík, The Academy of Fine Arts & Design, Slovakia; Professor Roger Paez PhD, Elisava, Barcelona School of Design and Engineering; and Dr Karen Hinojosa and Edgar Martínez Ludert, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico.
Gathering; Promoting meaningful engagements is the thematic focus of this year’s Winter School, and examines the relationships that humans have with their specific lived environments, using the GSA Highlands & Islands campus as a hyper-local context for exploration, as well as embracing the global dimension of digital technologies and sensor networks. Winter School and GSA’s Highlands & Islands campus are key agents aiming to shift the metropolitan focus regarding the narrative of creativity and innovation and re-position the rural as a node for a more meaningful transformation of the human environment.
The sense of place as a key element in connecting humans with their physical environment has been transformed in recent years by the increasing, and sometimes overwhelming, impact of digital devices, sensors and global networks. Human beings must reconcile the duality between the limited and precise experience they have as bodies and the broad and hyperlinked context that digital technologies afford us. Today, considering the increasing environmental and technological challenges we are facing as both people and planet, there is a need to reflect on the experience human beings have of place and how this has transformed our interaction with other humans and more-than-human entities— from animals to rocks, from rivers to soil— and the ecological inter-relations that these generate.
Contemporary life unfolds within a historically unprecedented matrix of interconnected networks, systems and environments underpinned by digital infrastructures, or platforms. This emergent ecology of experiences and interactions now mediates every dimension of human experience—economic, environmental, and ecological—creating complex adaptive systems, overseen by engineers, programmers and technicians. However, these arguably lack an appropriate design element – or an acknowledgement of affordances addressed to life, rather than technical, formal or utilitarian ambitions. The networks, systems and ecologies informing contemporary planetary existence represent relationships between people, environments and technological systems that transcend the traditional disciplinary boundaries of current design practice. This reality necessitates a revolutionary approach to design education that prepares practitioners to navigate, critique, and reshape these interconnected digital ecologies and living systems and the purposes to which these can be directed.
“The Winter School is where the planet puts its brightest young minds from around the world to work.” said Professor Gordon Hush, Head of The School of Innovation & Technology.
“Here the creativity, tenacity and expertise of the next generation starts working out how to deal with the huge issues facing our world – from forest fires, to rising sea levels, crop failures and threats to bio-diversity… Online and in the Highlands, sharing ideas, cultures and expertise this is where young people demonstrate that we can work together to make a difference, to change what it will mean to live on Planet Earth in the future.”
“The partnerships and collaborations fostered at the GSA’s Winter School programme – alongside the wider work of the GSA Rural Lab – address some of the complex issues facing our rural economies and ecologies across the world.” Said Professor Irene McAra-McWilliam, Director of GSA Highlands & Islands, and Deputy Director and Vice Principal, Research & Innovation at The Glasgow School of Art.
“The cross-disciplinary collaboration that is facilitated by Winter School champions new approaches to rural enterprise, sustainable economies, and place-driven research and innovation. It encourages new ways of thinking about sustainable growth in rural spaces, embraces and emphasises the importance of rural traditions, craft and making in future-focused sectors and emerging specialisms such as space, bioscience and AI.”
“Winter School helps to contribute to the development of long-term and sustainable creative futures for the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and for our esteemed international partners.”
For further information please contact press@gsa.ac.uk
About The Glasgow School of Art
The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) is internationally recognised as one of Europe’s leading independent university-level institutions for education and research in the visual creative disciplines. Our studio-based, specialist, practice-led teaching, learning and research draw talented individuals with a shared passion for visual culture and creative production from all over the world.
Originally founded in 1845 as one of the first Government Schools of Design, the School’s history can be traced back to 1753 and the establishment of the Foulis Academy delivering a European-style art education. Today, the GSA is an international community of over 3500 students and staff across architecture, design, digital, fine art and innovation in our campuses in Glasgow and Altyre (in the Scottish Highlands) and a thriving Open Studio programme delivering non-degree provision to over 1500 students annually.
About the School of Innovation and Technology (SIT)
The School of Innovation and Technology’s (SIT) explores future opportunities for innovation by considering alternative ways of living in the present. SIT aims to integrate social and technological innovations in a way that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries associated with art and science and so examine complex questions in fields as diverse as healthcare, education, technology and pressingly within the context of the climate/ecology crisis.
