International design and fashion schools visit Leather Cluster Barcelona

This summer, leading design and fashion schools from the United States and China have visited Leather Cluster Barcelona.

At the end of June, Burak Cakmak, dean of the Parsons School of Design, visited the cluster and, with the assistance of the Government of Catalonia Trade and Investment Office in New York (Acció – Generalitat de Catalunya) and accompanied by Xavier Badia, vice-president, and Jordi Vidal, executive director, was able to discover the ecosystem of stakeholders and companies that make up Leather Cluster Barcelona

The Parsons School of Design in New York is recognised worldwide as one of the most prestigious art and design universities.

In August, meanwhile, a group of more than 20 Chinese students and teachers of fashion, design and fine arts, from university schools in Guangxi, Henan, Hebei and Anhui, took a guided tour to discover the leather theme park of Leather Cluster Barcelona: tanneries, the leather museum, the University and the A3 Leather Innovation Center UdL research centre.

Both visits pursue the aim of establishing collaboration projects between design and fashion schools and Leather Cluster Barcelona. In this respect, these meetings have served to lay the foundations for a cooperation agreement that will make it possible to develop, between these international universities and the cluster, work placements for foreign students at the cluster’s companies and stakeholders, and also to strengthen leather teaching content at design schools with the support of Leather Cluster Barcelona professionals.

Leather Cluster Barcelona is the global, cross-cutting network made up of some 50 companies and organisations from the value chain of Catalonia’s leather industry. The cluster has its capital in Igualada and its headquarters at the Adoberia Bella, the European Interpretation Centre for Quality Leather.

Within a unique cooperation ecosystem of business, education and science built around leather, Leather Cluster Barcelona has as its main objective to bring together, coordinate and energise the efforts of all the companies and stakeholders of the Catalan leather sector, in order to increase their competitiveness, improve their efficiency and drive the growth of their joint business.