A3 Leather Innovation Center-UdL and Leather Cluster Barcelona are partners in the project

As part of the European Metaskills project, from 27 to 29 January 2026 one of the project’s international workshops was held at the University of Lleida - Igualada Campus, with the participation of various European partners.

The Councillor for Neighbourhoods and Civic Affairs, Sports and Vocational Training of Igualada City Council, Patrícia Illa, gave the institutional welcome to participants and opened the session.

MetaSkills4TCLF, co-funded by the European Union, addresses a critical challenge: equipping the textile, clothing, leather and footwear (TCLF) industries with the skills needed to excel in a world driven by green innovation and digital transformation. By developing an EU TCLF skills strategy, the international consortium of the Metaskills project aims mainly to drive new competencies, transversal skills and training methodologies adapted to the current and future challenges of the industrial sector, with a special focus on technical and vocational training. In this context, the international workshops are a key element for validating and testing the content developed by the consortium.

This meeting is part of a cycle of workshops being held in different cities of the participating countries, and its purpose is to start the pilot tests of the training content that will be deployed during the project. In Igualada, the focus was on the practical implementation of the materials and the assessment of their real applicability in training environments.

The content is aimed at the trainers who will support teaching staff, with the aim of reinforcing new pedagogical competencies, innovative methodologies and tools that enable better knowledge transfer to students. In this way, the project helps to improve the quality of training and align it with the real needs of the productive sector.

Holding this workshop in Igualada reinforces the territory’s role as a hub of knowledge, innovation and specialised training within the European arena.

As part of the training, Leather Cluster Barcelona coordinated a series of meetings for the project partners, which included visits to the La Gaspar Municipal School of Art and Design and the Igualada Leather Museum, as well as the Igualada leather ecosystem, strengthening collaboration between education, industry and the territory.

In this European MetaSkills4TCLF project, A3 Leather Innovation Center-UdL, together with other European knowledge centres, is responsible for organising the course content, while Leather Cluster Barcelona contributes to the dissemination and projection of the project’s results.

In parallel, the Metaskills4TCLF project is developing a communication plan with the publication of articles to inform society about different aspects of the textile, clothing, leather and footwear industries. In this regard, Leather Cluster Barcelona also collaborates with Metaskills4TCLF by writing content to highlight leather and its industry as a benchmark for the Circular Economy and Sustainable Fashion.

Leather Cluster Barcelona is a competitive cooperation environment that promotes cross-cutting, transformative strategic projects aimed at driving the ecosystem of the Catalan leather sector within the framework of Shared Value policies. The cluster is an accredited entity within the Catalonia Clusters programme and is supported by Acció.