The visit provides a close look at the Catalan tanning industry and opens up new avenues of collaboration between academia and business

Yesterday, 15 July, Leather Cluster Barcelona received a visit from a delegation from IED Barcelona, headed by Julia Weems, Head of Fashion School, and accompanied by the director of the master’s programmes and several members of the teaching staff.

IED Barcelona is a leading international school in the fields of design, fashion, visual arts and communication. With an educational offer closely linked to creativity, innovation and professional reality, the institution works to connect emerging talent with companies, materials and the challenges of contemporary industry.

The day began with an institutional presentation of Leather Cluster Barcelona, during which the main projects promoted by the organisation were outlined in areas such as innovation, sustainability, internationalisation, specialised training and the promotion of leather as a material of the future.

The delegation then visited the premises of Curtidos Badia, where it was able to see at first hand the various stages of the leather transformation process. The visit made it possible to discover the technical complexity, the capacity for innovation and the high degree of specialisation that characterise the Catalan tanning industry, as well as the sector’s commitment to quality, traceability and sustainability.

Beyond making the leather ecosystem of Igualada better known, the meeting served to begin exploring possible lines of collaboration between Leather Cluster Barcelona and IED Barcelona. Both institutions share the desire to bring academia closer to business reality and to strengthen the connection between students, professionals and companies in the sector.

This shared desire opens the door to promoting future projects linked to design, materials, innovation, training and talent attraction, fostering new opportunities for collaboration between the creative community and the leather industry.

The visit by IED Barcelona, a leading international school in the fields of design and fashion, forms part of Leather Cluster Barcelona’s aim to strengthen the connection between industry, training and creative talent.

With initiatives such as this, Leather Cluster Barcelona consolidates its role as a strategic driver of the leather value chain, contributes to the profile of the sector and fosters new opportunities for collaboration between the world of education and the world of business.

Leather Cluster Barcelona is an environment of competitive cooperation for promoting cross-cutting and transformative strategic projects with the aim of driving forward the ecosystem of the Catalan leather sector within the framework of Shared Value policies. The cluster is an accredited body within the Catalonia Clusters programme and has the support of Acció.