Whether you are arriving soon at CIB or thinking about it, this roadmap will help you figure out how your life is going to transform when you settle in Barcelona and give you an idea of how your experience at CIB will unfold.
Index:
1. Culinary Institute of Barcelona
CIB is the international cooking school in Barcelona. We work to encourage creativity and innovation empowerment in the culinary culture and for the development of purposeful entrepreneurs in the restaurant industry.
We aim for an international approach to the future and apply this vision to our culinary studies through our unique methodology designed to provide the necessary knowledge and skills that will allow our students to face the challenges of adapting to the constant changes happening in the 21st century.
To live and study cooking in Barcelona is to learn in one of the cultural and gastronomic capitals of the world, its multicultural heritage, the talent of the business entrepreneurs, and the dynamics of the economic situation create the perfect environment for those who are brave enough to stand out with their culinary creations.
Barcelona wants to lead climate change actions through food policies. It has been named World Sustainable Food Capital 2021 by the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, an international agreement between cities created to share knowledge and encourage the development of better food policies in the cities.
Creator of its culinary narrative, Barcelona is a diverse city of constant innovation and gastronomic change. The streets in the capital of Catalonia are a food festival with world-class creative restaurants, an iconic web of 42 public food markets, and a growing network of committed agroecological producers.
All year round you can find cultural, sports and music events. Its artistic and cultural history, where gastronomy is the center of all eyes and palates, make Barcelona a lifetime experience.
Culture is the shared values, beliefs, and performance that define a group of people and their behaviors. Understanding culture means unpacking the social meanings and emotions that define human experiences.
Several findings suggest that creativity reliably increases when we are exposed to multicultural ideas, people, or environments. Multicultural experiences tend to strongly affect creativity when they lead us to incorporate a new cultural identity into our overall self-concept. Meaning that if you can think, live, and share experiences with diverse cultures, it enables you to develop a different side of yourself and the way your ideas are built, which would be impossible to cultivate within your frontiers.
Through the diversity of our students, we were able to undertake our own culture, which shapes the experiences lived in CIB in a way we did not expect. This is one of the most important contributions we received from our CIBers. Food brings us all together, and it allows us to break boundaries. Gastronomy gives us the opportunity to connect and build a space for creating our own rules.
CIB goes beyond cooking. We do not teach our students how to replicate ideas or copy recipes. We teach them how to create what no one has ever done before; we teach how to overcome challenges.
Taking into consideration that each of our students has their own way of acquiring knowledge, we understood that it is essential to offer a variety of options, dynamics, and learning techniques. Creating content that aligns with the interests of our students to strengthen their participation and motivation.
From the first drafts of the school and with the idea of providing the best learning environment, we knew that the campus structure had to be designed to follow our methodology: the student is the backbone of our existence, therefor everything starts with our teachers, they are responsible for providing the context to inspire and encourage the future chefs. Arranging changing scenarios to foster different learning experiences and diverse classroom formats to develop, not only the knowledge they need to assemble an idea, but also skills to make it real.
It’s been three years since the first generation of CIBers walked through our gates with the idea of transforming their careers, their lives, and creating an impact on their community. As Malcolm X said: “education is a passport to the future because tomorrow belongs to those who are prepared for it”, these are the CIBers who are building the future right now:
Imagine a school where instead of classrooms, there are large spaces designed for learning, a school where you can find Bill Gates or Frida Kahlo in the restroom. Imagine a school where you are never told "this is wrong", but rather "this meets or doesn't meet with the goal we’ve set”. Where you can think differently and that makes you better. A school where imagining is as important as doing. Now imagine yourself at CIB.