Who we are

from Left to Right: Paschale, Fiona and Kim

Paschale Straiton

Founder, Performer, Writer and Director

Paschale began performing on the street in 2000. She was struck by the ability to connect with a broad spectrum of people on the street and she watched skilful performers enchant people to join in. She was enchanted by the moments when strangers agreed to her offer to step into a world of fantasy and to play with her – moments, described by Tony Liddington from Prom Prom Productions as ‘what it’s all abouts.’

She has worked with many outdoor arts companies including: co-creating Full Circle with Avanti Display, a curiosity involving 2 people and 110 metal buckets that has toured from Stockton to Korea; writing the script and storyboard for Walk the Plank’s River Stories for Reading Borough Council; co-devised and performed in Sturgeon Moon, a project that visited communities along the River Severn with Desperate Men.

Directing credits outside Red Herring range from The Brooklyn Healer, a one-to-one experience inside a taxi for Miraculous Theatre; to Ramshacklicious’ multi-layered project Club Supreme, which includes a digital world, an interactive installation and a large-scale show and involves various opportunities for community participation.

Kim Tilbrook (Right)

Performer, Arts Consultant, Producer and Educator

Kim has over 30 years experience in the performing arts, as a
performer, producer and educator.

As a performer, as well as work with Red Herring, she has recently
worked with Dank Parish, Stickleback Plasticus and Swank.
Previous work includes Mummerandada, Medicine Show and
partnerships with Franki Anderson and Angela de Castro.
As a producer she worked on projects such as Life Cycles and
Landscapes with Activate Performing Arts (partnerships with
And:Now and multiple Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty); the
development of the Wye Valley River Festival and Christmas at
Spiegeltent Bristol.

As an educator she has worked on Artist Development projects with
Boomtown Fair; as Artist Educator for Nowhereisland, an arctic
island created by Situations, SW Cultural Olympiad; with Real
Ideas Organisation and Creative Partnerships. Her engagement
work in Bridgwater with the Building Schools for the Future
programme won a national award for stakeholder engagement.
She was also a member of the Management Committee of the
National Association of Street Arts from 2016-2022.

She is excited by arts projects that are socially democratic – that
take place in public places and in which everyone can take part, as
audience members or participants. She is motivated to create
opportunities for artists and audiences together to create, deliver
and experience work of exceptional quality that comments upon
and challenges our accepted status quo, seeing people and places
in new ways and advocating a call to action to shape the future.

Fiona Fraser Smith 

Walking artist, Arts producer and Manager

With many strings to her creative bow, she’s been Director of Appledore Arts and the Appledore Visual Arts Festival, Producer & Programmer for Beaford Arts and as an independent freelance producer and fundraiser for a variety of artists and companies including Burn the Curtain (outdoor promenade theatre), Ruth Mitchell (playwright and performer), Stacked Wonky Dance (contemporary outdoor dance) and the Bureau of Silly Ideas (outdoor arts).

Fiona has a background in biological sciences. She is passionate in encouraging people to investigate and celebrate the natural world. She is a Founding Director of the North Devon UNESCO Biosphere Foundation, has enabled environmental scientists and artists to collaborate through the Marine Biological Association and has produced two conferences for Invisible Dust Under Her Eye at theBritish Library and Sound of the Sea Symposium for Hull City of Culture.

She has a deep interest in creative work which reflects the uniqueness of people and place, of landscape and space and of human relationship with our natural environments. She lives and works in the rural wilds of North Devon.

Find out more about our Company History