About

Informed - context and drivers

The GSA is a diverse community of 3,500 students and staff and over 22,000 alumni working and practicing across the world.

We are global, internationally significant and influential as a leading centre for studio based creative education and research and our Strategic Plan 2022 – 2027 has been developed collaboratively.  We have engaged with over 400 internal and external stakeholders from across the GSA’s community of staff, students, graduates and partners to inform, alongside externally produced foresight research and rigorous self-reflection and iteration, the development of our ambition for the future of The Glasgow School of Art and our Strategic Focus to 2027.

Today with campuses in Glasgow and a significant rural hub in Altyre in the Highlands of Scotland, our ability to work across two places, rural and urban offers considerable opportunities for our education and research and the contribution and impact we can make.

Glasgow is an important and dynamic creative and cultural city, home to a growing population of creatives, practitioners from the visual and performing arts, and some of Scotland’s most important cultural and creative organisations.  It is an entrepreneurial city, the largest economy in Scotland with the third-highest GDP per capita of any city in the UK, and Glasgow's creative industries are a major source of economic growth and employment. 

The city’s creative industries, together with its major cultural institutions, including The Glasgow School of Art, have a global reputation and influence that builds on Glasgow’s position as a European cultural capital, making it one of the UK’s most successful city-economies alongside London and Manchester.  The GSA has a significant role to play from the economic impact of our staff, and students, and with nearly 60% of our graduates remaining in the city working within the creative and cultural industries, the wider economy or through establishing their own businesses.  Importantly, they all contribute to the city’s cultural infrastructure through exhibitions, events and their international networks.