Case Study: Ri Baroche — Amplifying Community Voices Through Heritage
Participant: Ri Baroche
Focus Areas: Heritage Tours, Exhibitions, Community Engagement
Programme: City Reflections
Location: Southampton
Overview
Ri Baroche joined the programme to strengthen her ability to respond creatively to heritage collections and to craft meaningful stories that reflect local history, place, and community voices. Entering with strong confidence, Ri sought to deepen her engagement practice and expand the inclusivity of her work.
Skills & Professional Growth
Through the project, Ri developed new approaches to community engagement and refined her curatorial practice. She gained confidence in working with existing collections and in shaping narratives that connect heritage with contemporary communities.
“I hoped to gain skills and confidence in responding to an existing collection… This project has met and exceeded my expectations.”
Ri also reports increased confidence in collaborating with arts, culture, heritage, and social organisations, enabling her to deliver projects that celebrate and enrich local communities.
Expanding Access & Inclusion
A key achievement for Ri was reaching new and more diverse audiences, including deaf, partially sighted, older, and younger participants. By incorporating audio recordings into the final pieces in response to community curators’ needs, she enhanced accessibility and deepened the emotional impact of the work.
Her work explored themes of community voice, cultural identity, and heritage, helping people connect more deeply with Southampton’s history while celebrating diversity and attracting visitors to the city.
Programme Highlights
Ri valued the group sessions, heritage site visits, and celebration events, noting that the collaborative environment supported both creativity and responsiveness to community needs.
“Responding to the community curators’ needs and interests by incorporating audio recordings into the pieces was really meaningful and added to the final result.”
She rated the programme good overall and praised the final outputs for exceeding expectations in ambition, emotional depth, and clarity of intent.
Reflections & Recommendations
Ri suggested that future programmes could benefit from:
- Clearer expectations for curators at the outset
- More time for community visits and relationship building
- Additional flexibility to support marginalised and neurodivergent participants
These insights highlight her commitment to inclusive, community-led practice.
Lasting Impact
The experience has strengthened Ri’s professional network within the heritage and cultural sectors and reinforced her commitment to community-centred storytelling.
“A huge thank you to all of the team… It has been one of the highlights of my life and career to work on this project with you all.”
Conclusion
Ri Baroche’s journey demonstrates the transformative power of inclusive heritage practice — showing how thoughtful curation, accessibility, and collaboration can amplify community voices and create meaningful cultural experiences.
Case Study: Ri Baroche – Championing LGBTQIA+ Voices Through Art
Ri Baroche is a performer and community connector representing Southampton’s LGBTQIA+ community. Alongside creating safe spaces, such as an inclusive football group in Totton (Ri Baroche: Creating safe spaces for LGBTQIA+ youth – Southampton Forward), Ri has been central to many cultural projects in the city, including City Reflections and the Tapestry Music Festival.
City Reflections 2: Illuminating Southampton’s Stories
For the second phase of City Reflections, Ri worked with the City Gallery Archives to curate a projection exploring Southampton’s art collections. Collaborating with InFocus (a charity supporting young LGBTQIA+ people), Ri combined targeted outreach with a wider social media callout to engage the community.
- 12 participants visited the archives, discovering works and themes connected to identity and belonging.
- A follow-up visit to the Gallery’s sculpture exhibition broadened perspectives on the city’s collections.
- Ri then hosted a free creative writing workshop at October Books, where participants reflected on three key themes: “Strangers Finding a New Home”, “Generosity”, and “Creative Diversity.”
The aim is to transform this community writing into new video and audio recordings, to be woven into the final projection.
Focusing on LGBTQIA+ History
Ri centred the project on the legacy of Arthur Jeffress, an LGBTQIA+ collector who left his art collection to the Gallery. For Ri, this was about addressing a gap in LGBTQIA+ history:
- Offering positive stories beyond narratives of secrecy or tragedy.
- Recording lived experiences in Southampton, linked to the city’s art history.
- Inviting the community into the gallery — echoing Jeffress’s own flamboyant invitations — ahead of its 2026 reopening.
Impact
“It was a real privilege to bring the community into the city’s art gallery, and to experience the joy and civic pride that it brought out of them.” – Ri
Ri also reflected on her own growth:
“I have grown in ability to use the visual arts in my work … it was a real learning experience and a boost in confidence to find I could apply my skills to a project that focuses on the visual medium.”
The project revealed unexpected positivity from Ri’s participants about Southampton’s cultural spaces, reinforcing the gallery as a place of community, growth, and belonging.