Next academic year, Igualada Town Council will launch a new Higher Vocational Training Diploma in Leather Sculptural Techniques at the La Gaspar Municipal School of Art. This course, unique in Catalonia, will provide a continuation of the intermediate diploma that can already be studied at La Gaspar.

The Town Council will provide the resources needed to bring about this new Higher Diploma, which will have 30 places and will allow young students at the La Gaspar School of Art to complete the whole training pathway in leather, learning not only how to work with it but also working on design and innovation.

In addition, Igualada Town Council has secured 200,000 euros within the General State Budget, which will be invested in full in strengthening the school’s existing workshop and investing in educational innovation. In this regard, this March a delegation from La Gaspar visited, together with Leather Cluster Barcelona, the workshop and factory of the Loewe brand in Madrid, on a trip to find inspiration and gain a broader view of how a very advanced leather manufacturing system works.

Complementing La Gaspar’s training offer with a Higher Diploma in Design in leather sculptural techniques will allow many young people to continue from the intermediate diploma into the higher one, and will attract students from other university studies, to pursue their professional activity both in the field of entrepreneurship and in developing professionally in large companies related to the making of leather articles.

At the same time, this commitment to neo-craftsmanship will allow Igualada, which already has a great ecosystem of companies and stakeholders from across the value chain of the leather industry, to become a benchmark centre and a magnet for leather manufacturing companies.

Catalonia has a great opportunity to generate business, quality employment and entrepreneurship through leather design, manufacturing and neo-craftsmanship. On the one hand, our country already has a considerable fabric of leather designers and artisans who, in a context in which local consumption is one of the great consumer trends, can make the leap from small businesses to large companies. On the other, we have one of the most important manufacturing workshops of the Vuitton group, employing around two thousand people. Also, major fashion and luxury brands that buy a significant proportion of the leather for making their articles from Leather Cluster Barcelona companies have recently been making large investments in craft workshops, mainly in Italy and France, given the growing international demand for quality, cutting-edge and sustainable fashion products.

Leather Cluster Barcelona has supported La Gaspar’s new Higher Vocational Training Diploma at every stage, in the conviction that a commitment to neo-craftsmanship strengthens the cluster’s business cooperation ecosystem and boosts the leather sector.

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