During these first two months of 2024, Leather Cluster Barcelona has delivered a number of training sessions to major design and fashion schools. Specifically, between January and February, the cluster's leather ecosystem was visited for training purposes by the Barcelona University Design Centre (BAU), the LCI Barcelona design school, participants in the Erasmus+ Transitions project led by the Elisava School and coming from the Netherlands, Italy and Sweden, and students from the Higher Diploma in Clothing Styling at the Llotja Higher School of Design and Arts, the oldest design school in Spain.

With these training activities, which combine practical and theoretical knowledge and are aimed at young students, Leather Cluster Barcelona seeks to promote knowledge of leather in order to encourage its use and application in the designs and creations of these future professionals of the fashion world.

Through this training activity at the cluster, the young students were able to enjoy the unique leather theme park that Leather Cluster Barcelona offers, through active learning that combines guided visits with master classes delivered by qualified trainers from different fields.

These tailored training sessions imparted knowledge about the nature, structure, production processes, properties and characteristics of leather, and also included visits to the Badia tanneries, to the La Gaspar Municipal School of Art and Design in Igualada, to the Cal Granotes Museum and to Adoberia Bella, the headquarters of Leather Cluster Barcelona.

At Adoberia Bella, Jordi Vidal, executive director of the cluster, gave talks to the students consisting of an instructive learning journey, from the origin and raison d'être of leather through to consumer sociology, focusing on the leather sector as a key player in the circular economy and sustainable fashion.

Led by the professionals of Leather Cluster Barcelona, these training programmes are promoted in order to strengthen leather teaching content in design and fashion schools, to reinforce the leather-fashion connection and above all so that our country's future designers consider leather a fine material to apply in their designs and specify leather tanned in Catalonia.

The physical properties of leather make it a unique material of great value for making footwear, clothing, fashion accessories, furniture upholstery and seat upholstery for cars and aircraft, among many other applications.

The Circular Economy and Sustainable Fashion, characteristics intrinsic to leather articles, are values with which fashion brands genuinely committed to sustainability would like to be associated.

The training sessions with design and fashion schools will continue in the coming months, the next being in April with a visit from the Higher Centre for Fashion Design (CSDMM) of the Polytechnic University of Madrid.

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 entity within the Catalonia Clusters programme and has the support of Acció.