Glasgow School of Art

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-09

‘A Golden Thread: Crafting the Creative Economy from Scotland’s Highlands, Lowlands and Islands’ embeds a world-class programme of doctoral training and enterprise development within Scotland’s rural and island communities. Located at the extremes of the national footprint, these communities can face isolation, disconnect and multiple layers of marginalisation. Craft is a focal theme for the programme, building on its deep heritage in rural and island traditions. Envisaged as a ‘golden thread’ between local and global, pasts and futures and across sectors, disciplines and geographies, the programme framework supports interdisciplinary exploration of craft practice and its application to and in future-focussed sectors such as space, aquaculture and bio-design. Embracing craft as innovation, and in support of craft’s sector profile as a majority of women-led micro-enterprises, the cohort training offers transferable enterprise and employability skills, and networks practice-led doctoral students within the enterprise and innovation landscape. The interdisciplinary and cross-sector delivery consortium connects arts, community and placemaking organisations embedded within Moray and the Highlands, the South of Scotland and the Scottish islands, including Moray Arts Development and Engagement (M:ADE), Shetland Arts, SkyeSkyns and Fyne Futures, to consortium lead The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) and co-leads The Open University and Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), and to partners working across the Creative Economy, including The Bernat Klein Foundation, The Crichton Trust, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and South of Scotland Enterprise. The consortium and its programme embed and embody a demonstrable commitment to diversity, equity and excellence. Its impact-led aims and objectives are to: Deliver a world-class doctoral training programme and cohort experience. Embed enterprise and innovation in programme design, delivery and governance. Create new and enhanced pathways to and through doctoral and supervisory training, with a focus on increased access, diversity and skills, mental health and wellbeing, positive experiences, completions and post-doctoral careers. Strengthen Scotland’s Craft sector, Creative Industries and the wider Creative Economy, addressing key skills gaps and diversifying workforce, audience and outputs.  Generate and catalyse a range of wider economic and social impacts, across multiple layers of marginalisation and connected to national policy and global agendas. Design and pilot a bespoke evaluation and learning framework to capture, demonstrate and enhance impacts.  The programme prioritises recruitment for doctoral studentships from within partner rural and island communities, utilising best-practice approaches, including ringfenced awards. Informed by cross-sector expertise and lived experience of current and former doctoral students, the programme incorporates foundational pre-training support and a range of flexible study options including online, distance and part-time study. Enhanced provision includes Collaborative Doctoral Awards and specialist skills-based secondments co-hosted with place and industry partners. Cohort training combines person-centred development and industry-focussed enterprise and employability skills. The cohort offer includes a pre-accelerator enterprise programme, taster sessions and industry placements, skills development masterclasses and workshops, expert coaching and mentoring, and an online peer support network. The cohort will be further strengthened through a challenge-based collaborative research project. Training incorporates specific support for supervisors, with the potential to extend provision to students and colleagues across the UK SSI research community. Responsive programme delivery is supported and enhanced by a novel and dynamic programming and evaluation tool. The tool facilitates student-led configuration of interdisciplinary and individualised study themes and topics, and will support ‘in motion’, iterative performance measurement, impact evaluation and learning, through the lifetime of the programme and beyond.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-02

Designing Landscape Stewardship will deliver a series of participatory design events across three geographic locations in Scotland where ecosystem restoration is underway. The project will support initiatives in bioregions in Findhorn Watershed, Tayside and the West coast rainforest to engage with their local communities and stakeholders, along with regenerative design experts, to co-design and test strategic governance practices, tools and processes that deliver co-benefits through nature-positive communities and economies. Across Scotland, nature restoration initiatives are increasing in quantity, scale and ambition. This follows global trends within green transition and climate change policy to regulate land use to support nature restoration and biodiversity; recognising thriving ecosystems as fundamental to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity decline, as well as being intrinsic to the wellbeing of all species (IPCC, 2023). The need to deliver just transitions (Scottish Government, 2021) for local communities in the process increases pressures to ensure nature restoration is managed and financed in ways that deliver local socioeconomic benefits. Utilising regenerative, more-than-human participatory design principles within a systemic design approach (The Design Council, 2021), this programme of activity will deliver place-based events and engagement that enables participants to work with strategic landscape decision-making and stewardship frameworks to strengthen their organisational models. The transversal skills, processes and indicators required to embed community-led and stewardship-based governance models and organisational practices will be mapped across all three locations. The project will culminate in a final roundtable event that brings all the geographic stakeholders together with national and regional policy representatives, centred around a knowledge exchange showcase and website launch. The website will feature organisations and communities’ experiences, emerging practices and the place-based co-designed tools and processes. Participating communities and businesses in each area will be involved in defining local co-benefits, such as developing new nature-positive entrepreneurship and employment opportunities, as well as contributing to a wider Sense of Place (Duggan et al, 2023) through nature connection. Acknowledging the challenges that ecosystem restorations face globally when attempting to resource their own developments and organisational growth, it is intended that designed outputs such as stewardship indicators and regenerative investment agreements will be replicable beyond UK geographies.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-11

The Empire Exhibition of 1938 was a major international exposition held in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow. Its purpose was to showcase the achievements of the British Empire, promote trade, and strengthen imperial bonds. It attracted over 13million visitors during its six-month duration, yet today there is so little evidence remaining that most people are unaware of its existence, even if they regularly use the park. Whilst overshadowed by WW2, the Exhibition remains a significant historical event and continues to be relevant to the study of British social, cultural, economic, industrial, and political history. However, there is now a crucial need to reassess narratives of the Exhibition from a postcolonial perspective. Aim: The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) has produced significant research into this event, including immersive 3D models, digitised cultural artefacts, and creative co-designed responses. Whilst earlier research focussed on architecture or using the buildings as inspiration for cross-disciplinary learning, this project uses narrative co-design to highlight the voices of people of Minoritised Ethnic heritages, whose cultures have been represented through the imperialist lens of the Exhibition. We will use the huge digital archive (e.g. 3D models, photographs, ephemera, radio) as prompts for learning and reflection and we will work closely with a range of Glasgow communities with connections to colonialism, anti-racism, and the location itself, to create and share polyvocal narratives about the history and heritage of both Glasgow and the British Empire. Diverse new interpretations will be presented through location-based augmented reality, within the actual site of the Exhibition (a large park.) This enables geographical and conceptual links to be made between the 'authorised' archive of historical data and contemporary understandings of the Exhibition and its legacies and encourages both critical and playful re-readings of history. Key objectives: -Undertake participatory design with a range of relevant communities including marginalised communities, local residents, schools, experts in Empire/colonialism. -Use participant reflections to co-design 3-5 narrative trails to guide audiences through the existing dataset and highlight diverse interpretations of the Exhibition. -Develop a location-based Augmented Reality (AR) app to deliver narratives in Bellahouston Park. -Enhance a desktop app, enabling remote access to narratives. Create lasting impact through exhibitions, ongoing access to the apps, networks investigating postcolonialism/AR for place-based learning, upskilling, and legacy of school events. -Disseminate project as an exemplar for postcolonial re-readings of heritage. Impact/benefits: The main outcome will be a range of narratives that can be experienced playfully, recreationally, or academically, both within and remote to the site of the Exhibition. The audiences are therefore broad but will primarily include: -Glasgow residents and tourists, using the app to add interest and awe to park visits (single or repeated) and deepening their knowledge of local history and communities. -History teachers and learners (of all ages) who will see how polyvocal interpretations can give a more rounded and representative view of British heritage. -Media/game writers/producers working with layering content into public spaces through mobile devices, and their audiences/consumers. -Researchers/producers using the methodology and outputs as a best-practice case study.