On Thursday 3 November the cluster organised a training day at the Adoberia Bella, aimed exclusively at designers and artisans of leather goods and accessories.

Through training, Leather Cluster Barcelona seeks to add value for the people who work in the design and artisanal creation of leather articles, championing the potential of craftsmanship and giving visibility to the considerable network of leather designers and artisans in our country.

Leather is regarded as an artisanal and traditional sector, as was shown by the strategic consultancy project on the perception of the image of the leather industry and its products, which Leather Cluster Barcelona carried out thanks to Acció’s IRC line of grants for clusters, over many months in 2019 and 2020, together with one of the international benchmark firms in the field of communication and strategy: Ogilvy.

Highlighting the trade from its most artisanal, traditional and innovative side reinforces those aspects for which the leather sector is well regarded by society, placing the emphasis on proximity and on the industry’s history.

The aim of the training day was to gain an understanding of how leather behaves according to its nature and of its application in craftsmanship and design as an original material of the Circular Economy. Knowledge was imparted on the structure, processes and properties of leather, and also on the applications and adaptation of leather in design and in the creation of leather articles.

The training, which aroused a great deal of interest, was attended by various artisans who work with leather in their creative processes to make different accessories and articles:

• Mireia Rius
• CDream Leathers
• Nubuckcuir Leather bags
• MUN BCN Leather craft
• Evegé Leather
• Pell a la Pell

Most of these professionals trained in the knowledge and handling of leather and its application by taking the intermediate vocational training course in Leather Accessory Craftsmanship at La Gaspar in Igualada. This fact, together with the growing interest among young people in working in artisanal trades, in a context in which local consumption is one of the major consumer trends, confirms the need for the Catalan leather sector to take a step forward in training with the introduction of a higher-level design degree in leather sculptural techniques at the La Gaspar school of art and design in Igualada.

Complementing La Gaspar’s training offering with a Higher Degree in Design in leather sculptural techniques would enable many young people to continue from the intermediate degree and move on to the higher degree, and would attract students from other university studies, in order to pursue their professional activity both in entrepreneurship and in developing professionally within large companies related to the making of leather articles.

Leather Cluster Barcelona is an environment of competitive cooperation 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.