Recognising first hand the many difficulties in surviving as an artist or designer Shirley set up designGAP in 1980 to assist high quality, innovative, contemporary designers, makers and design-producers with the marketing of their work, not as an agent but as a catalyst. She still runs designGAP voluntarily as a non profit venture and over years well over 2000 designers have been involved.
Many well established and newly emerging design-producers and design-makes have shown with her on Trade Show stands and at Retail Exhibitions, in fashion, giftware, jewellery and interior accessories in the UK and overseas. designGAP and its exhibitions have won many awards and been featured on television, in newspapers feature articles and magazines.
Shirley’s photograph library 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.
In the spring of 1997she published her first designGAP BUYERS’ GUIDE, and since then there have been annual editions. This august there are updates of the directory in two retailers magazines ‘Progressive Gifts’ and ‘Homes Worldwide’ and also as a supplement in ‘Picture Business’.