Recognising first hand the many difficulties in surviving as an artist or designer Shirley Frost set up designGAP in 1980 to assist high quality, innovative, contemporary UK artist-makers and designer-producers with the promotion of their work. Not as an agent but as a catalyst. The first event was a group stand of 16 including herself at a Trade Fair in 1981 under the umbrella of the Design Council. She still runs designGAP voluntary as a not for profit venture without government or other grant funding. Over the years it could well be that a total of about 3,000 have been assisted in one way or another.

Since that successful first show many well established and newly emerging creatives have shown with her on Trade Show stands of Fashion, Giftware, Jewellery and Interior Accessories in the UK and Overseas and more recently into Retail Exhibitions too. DesignGAP and its exhibitors have won many awards and been featured on television, in numerous newspapers and magazines.

Shirley’s photographic collection of designers’ work has been useful to a number of specialist writers and in the early 1980’s it was the main source for a V&A Museum Collection of Contemporary Fashion Jewellery.

In the mid-1980’s there was a small designGAP shop for fashion accessories in Hyper- Hyper London, which she set up as a Designer Co-operative. Later she opened a designGAP Showroom in Birmingham as a year-long experiment. Five years of illness in the early 90’s curtailed further developments, but in the spring of 1997 she published her first designGAP TRADE BUYERS’ GUIDE, and since then there have been nine annual bound editions with other years having designGAP DIRECTORY updates. Additional information is available in the constantly growing website www.designgap.co.uk which also first went online in 1997 also. These two developments together compliment and reinforce the Trade Fair promotions. The website, of course, is available to a far wider audience and has a broad range of information available relating to contemporary craft and design.

DesignGAP celebrated its 25th Birthday in 2005. In May of that year Shirley was presented with the GA’s Honorary Achievement Award “for her major contribution to the UK gift industry” and in December she received an Honorary Doctorate of Science from the Business School of the University of Birmingham for her innovative work assisting mini-micro creative businesses

Appreciating that the work of many members also relates to Applied Art, Usable Art and Wearable Art, as well as Painting, Printmaking and Sculpture, Shirley is now setting up ARTgap as a sister organisation run with similar aims, ambitions and objectives. While for designGAP there is a continuing Trade Fair presence at major UK venues now with members’ own independent stands on special designGAP aisles or in clusters. Many members also show at Consumer Fairs so there are plans for designGAP/ARTgap areas in some of those.

Shirley is still searching for a permanent administrative home for designGAP where there could be an archive documenting all the projects and past members with full information on current members and if space allows, changing exhibitions could be held to mirror proposed Virtual exhibitions on the website. In the meantime while still running designGAP Shirley is working on the vast amount of archive reference which has accumulated in the office at The Big Peg in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter.

In 2010 designGAP will become 30 years old. To celebrate an event is planned to include a selection of exhibitors from the three decades; the venue will be the Royal College Art early in May 2011. At the same time of year in 2012 a follow-up is planned for the same venue for a selection of current members and it is hoped that this will become an annual event.

About the Founder

Shirley Frost graduated from Royal College of Art in Ceramics in 1960 and travelling scholarships took her to Egypt, Czechoslovakia, Mexico and USA. She was a Fellow of both the Chartered Society of Designers and Society of Designer Craftsmen, and in the 70’s was a founder member of the Designer Jewellers Group. Shirley has lectured in and ran courses on, 3D Design and Practice, Drawing for Designers, and Design Crafts.

Shirley’s own work, ceramics, small sculptures, jewellery and paintings – has been shown in solo and group exhibitions and at specialist Trade Fairs. She also did some free lance design work and her own commemorative ranges and many other works were selected onto the Design Council Index of Designers and were included in many of their exhibitions. Among her private commissions was one from Prince Charles at the time of his Investiture as Prince of Wales in 1969 for a presentation range of cufflinks and boxes. Currently, full time involvement with designGAP/ARTgap leaves little time for her own creative work.