Images: Presenting outcomes at an earlier Winter School
International students, academics, designers and researchers, including a team from Google in Seattle, come together to address the biggest issue facing the planet today.
As Glasgow gears up to host the UN’s 2020 climate change summit the city’s Art School is asking what role can new and emerging technologies play in helping devise behaviours and ways of living that will neither “cost the earth,” nor sacrifice the future for the present.
The Glasgow School of Art’s 2020 Winter School, which starts today, 13 January 2020, at the Highlands and Islands campus, brings together students, academics, designers and researchers from across the globe, including leading Design agency, Nord Projects, and a team from Google’s Machine Intelligence and Design Research team in Seattle, to address the biggest issue facing the planet today.
“We live in a developed world of consumer abundance unlike anything that human history has ever recorded,”says Dr Gordon Hush, Head of Innovation School at The Glasgow School of Art. “We also inhabit a world threatened by scarcity of resources, climate change, enforced mass migration and a creeping sense of guilt born of a sense that we may be the last ‘lucky generation’, the last to enjoy a dream of an always improving future. Instead, we may be bequeathing to our children and grandchildren a dystopian world, bereft of natural resources or opportunities for a better life.”
“The Glasgow School of Art’s Winter School 2020 will start from the local – the natural environment of the Scottish Highlands – and move to the global bringing together contributors from the USA, Asia and Europe to look at how emerging technologies might be harnessed so that society can get the full benefit of future innovations in products and services without destroying the planet.”
Over 150 students and academics from France (Audencia), Germany (KISD), Japan (Chiba University), Portugal (University of Aveiro) and the UK (The Glasgow School of Art and the University of Bristol) will spend this week exploring the issues of sustainability, climate change, design & nature. They will then be joined next week by a team from leading design agency, Nord Projects and a group of researchers from Google for a four-day intensive programme in which the participants will give free range to their creativity in proposing and devising solutions to the ‘costing the earth’ challenge.
The Glasgow School of Winter School 2020 runs at the GSA’s Highlands and Islands campus in Forres from 13 – 23 January.
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For further information contact:
Lesley Booth, 0779 9414474
Notes for Editors
GSA Innovation School
Design Innovation addresses complex challenges through new design practices and bespoke community engagement. The discipline aims to create and design preferable ways of living that will lead to collective wellbeing and sustainable growth.
Because the challenges we addressed are complex design innovators engage with a broad community of people to find the innovative solutions that will allow them to flourish. GSA Innovation School has forged creative partnerships with people from a diverse knowledge base: experts and businesses as well as members of the public. Only by bringing these different groups together is it possible to start to examine how the future might look.
The Glasgow School of Art Highlands and Islands campus opened in January 2016. It is located at Blairs Steading on the Altyre Estate near Forres
Nord Projects
Nord Projects is a design and technology consultancy which works collaboratively with companies to figure out what’s next and how to get there – from early stage research and development to delivering useful, well designed product experiences. Their projects range from exploring the frontier of new tech with clients like Google, to crafting the first product for startups like Ome. It was co-founded by GSA Product Design alumnus, Ben Pawle.