Mike Redwood
Columnist
International Leather Maker
To the future generation,
I’ve been thinking about the world you are growing up into, and how different it is from the one I knew at your age. There’s endless talk of artificial intelligence (AI), vanishing careers and an uncertain future. It can make everything feel like it is shifting under your feet.
I wanted to share a simple thought from my own life.
For over 50 years, I’ve worked with leather, not just as a product, but as a living material. What I learned, slowly over the decades, is that materials teach lessons no computer screen or algorithm ever could. They have elegant grains, amazing structures, strength, quirks and character. You grasp them not by reading, but by handling them, working them, sometimes getting things wrong and trying again.
That hands-on learning still matters. It will matter more than ever in the years ahead.
Yes, machines will claim many jobs, and that’s real. But knowledge rooted in judgment, touch, care and creativity? That’s harder to automate. Making things well, especially from natural materials like leather, lives in that irreplaceable space.
Leather is one example. It is not perfect, and it raises important questions about how we use resources and treat animals. Those questions are real and your generation will need to answer them better than mine has. Yet, leather shines in sustainability: it turns livestock byproducts into something lasting, repairable and far from disposable. In a world rethinking waste and sustainability, those qualities count for something.
I’m not writing to tell you what you should do. You will each find your own path, and it may be very different from mine. But if any of you feel drawn to making things, whether in leather or any other material, then lean in. It is not a lesser path. It is a different kind of intelligence.
At the same time, do not turn away from new technologies. Learn how they work. Use them where they help. The future will belong to people who can combine understanding of the physical world with the tools of the digital one and, even within the material world, recognise that leather only does so much. Its byproduct status limits volume and means it has to live alongside and compete with other materials. It is not a crime to lend your skill to good adjacent materials and makes sense as we try and calculate the threats to livestock from climate change.
If there is one thing I would pass on, it is this: try to stay close to things that are real. Materials, people and work that has a tangible result. They tend to keep you grounded when everything else feels uncertain.
Do not forget that while there may currently be some form of transatlantic divide over matters of ESG, tanneries and leather workers have always supported and benefitted from the communities they live in. The leather industry needs and supports the concept of a fourth pillar of cultural sustainability that is all about locality, history, eco-cultural resilience, tacit knowledge and the vitality of cultural life in communities.
Do not try and romanticise the past or build a strategy out of nostalgia. This is about putting tactile wisdom over abstraction, all along with the necessary chemistry, engineering and artistry the leather industry requires. It does pivot towards hands-on learning and echoes artisan traditions I have observed in British, European, Japanese and global contexts.
My one takeaway: stay close to what is real. Materials, people, work with tangible outcomes. They anchor you amid the flux.
With much love,
An active leather enthusiast.
mike@internationalleathermaker.com
You can find Dr Mike Redwood across social media at @michaelredwood.
Publication and Copyright of “Redwood Column” remains with the publishers of International Leather Maker. The articles cannot be reproduced in any way without the express permission of the publisher. The views are those of the author and not necessarily those of ILM.
