Frankie Critchfield is a designer, maker, and educator whose work champions creativity, play, and sustainable thinking. With a background that blends product design, teaching, and hands-on making, she approaches every project with curiosity, resourcefulness, and a belief that creativity should feel joyful, playful and accessible.

Frankie holds an MA in Product Design with a focus on sustainable and inclusive design, as well as a PGCE in Design Technology. Her path has taken her from designing toys and greeting cards at Hallmark to teaching design in secondary schools, and now to working with the Learning teams at both the Young V&A and the Design Museum. Across each role, she advocates for design that invites people to make, experiment, and explore with what they already have.

Raised in a creative household where the running mantra was “we could make that,” Frankie grew up with a deep appreciation for imaginative play and the quiet magic of turning everyday materials into something new. That early sense of resourcefulness continues to guide her work today. Whether she’s designing products, running workshops, or developing playful learning experiences, she focuses on sustainable approaches favouring reuse, upcycling, and mindful making over sourcing new materials.

Frankie’s own creative practice includes designing playful, sustainable products that give discarded or overlooked materials a second life. Her work celebrates the idea that design doesn’t need to be complicated or wasteful to be meaningful. Often it’s the simplest materials, used with care and imagination, that spark the most joy.

Through her work as a designer and educator, Frankie invites people of all ages to rediscover the pleasure of making, exploring, and playing not as something reserved for childhood, but as a lifelong way of engaging with the world.

Play, craft and using what you already have, are consistent themes in all her work. Frankie is  always interested working with people that share these values. Clients of hers include The Design Museum, Museum of London, The V&A, The Young V&A, BLESMA, SOHO House, The Drive Project, Credit Agricole, Oasis Play, Sonshine magazine, MT Tape, Forbes Treecare and multiple primary and secondary schools across the UK.

Please get in contact if you are interested in collaborating or booking a workshop. hello@crafterscoolclub.co.uk.