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We offer daily services and a creative programme of talks, events and concerts. We seek to be a welcoming space for people to reflect, create and debate.
Sunday 6 April 6.30pm St Pancras Church
Join the music scholars of St James’s, Piccadilly as they celebrate women composers throughout the ages.
Wednesday 16 April 6:30pm
In this special collaboration for Holy Week, St James’s Piccadilly brings together the music of composer Rachel Chaplin and spoken word presented by The Revd Lucy Winkett.
St James’s hosts inclusive services and a cultural programme. We seek to be a welcoming space for people to reflect, create and debate.
St James’s is a place to explore, reflect, pray, and support all who are in need. We are a Church of England parish in the Anglican Communion.
We host a year-round creative programme encompassing music, visual art and spoken word.
We offer hospitality to people going through homelessness and speak out on issues of injustice, especially concerning refugees, asylum, racial justice, and LGBTQ+ issues.
St James’s strives to advocate for earth justice and to develop deeper connections with nature.
We aspire to be a home where everyone can belong. We’re known locally and globally for our unique history and beauty, as well as faith in action, creativity and the arts, and a commitment to social and environmental justice.
We strive to be a Eucharist-centred, diverse and inclusive Christian community promoting life in abundance, wellbeing and dignity for all.
St James’s Piccadilly has been at the heart of its community since 1684. We invite you to play your part in securing this historic place for generations to come.
The work of St James’s, it costs us £5,000 per day to enable us to keep our doors open to all who need us.
New walkways, a restored courtyard and re-landscaped gardens will provide fully accessible, beautiful spaces for everyone to enjoy as well as improving our environmental performance.
St James's Church 197 Piccadilly London W1J 9LL
Directions on Google Maps
Flight (2015) and Suspended (2017)
Arabella Dorman is a British war artist and portrait painter who has worked with refugees in Lesbos, Calais and Dunkirk. In December 2015 she created an art installation at St James’s by suspending a dinghy, which had been used to transport refugees across the Mediterranean, from our roof. Called ‘Flight’, the exhibit was on display until February 2016. Two years after the installation artwork Flight (2015), the artist Arabella Dorman and St James’s Church presented a sequel installation called Suspended.
Watch Flight by filmaker Carolyn Davis, with interviews with Arabella, our rector Lucy Winkett and members of our community, and read Arabella’s own statement about her work.
In the two years since Flight, thousands more refugees have continued to flee war, persecution and famine for the hoped-for safety of European shores, deepening what has become the worst humanitarian crisis since World War Two. Suspended seeks to highlight the plight of these refugees, with particular emphasis on those who are now stranded in cities and detention centres across Europe – men, women and children hung between loss and hope, suspended between a past to which they cannot return, and a future to which they cannot move forward.
Composed of hundreds of items of clothing that have been discarded by refugees upon their arrival on the island of Lesbos, a stilled explosion has been created over the nave at St James’s Church inviting the viewer to contemplate the violent fragmentation experienced by the inhabitants of these garments.
Lit from the centre, the clothes are seen clearly then lost in the shadow as the light slowly changes in density. While the installation brightens, it represents the light of hope by which a refugee is carried forwards; as it dims, it seeks to remind us that we leave these individuals unseen and in darkness should we choose to ignore their plight and turn away from this most urgent and yet complicated issue of our time.
Today one in every 113 people in the world is forcibly displaced. Whilst Europe struggles to come to terms with this, human trafficking networks are becoming brutally efficient at exploiting and making profit from the vulnerability of migrants – especially the almost 100,000 unaccompanied minors.
Watch Suspended by filmaker Carolyn Davis, with interviews with Arabella, our rector Lucy and members of our community.
