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We offer daily services and a cultural programme of talks, events and concerts. We seek to be a welcoming space for people to reflect, create and debate.
St James’s Piccadilly, The Sixteen and the Genesis Foundation have joined forces in a five-year partnership celebrating the power of music to inspire, connect and bring people together. Discover extraordinary performances, new music and opportunities for the next generation of musicians.
At Christmas, St James’s is a place where everyone is welcome. For people facing loneliness, homelessness, poor mental health, financial hardship or displacement, our doors can offer something as simple – and as important – as a warm welcome, practical support and a place where they are known and treated with dignity.
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 put faith into action through hospitality, advocacy and practical support, championing equality, racial justice and the dignity of refugees and asylum seekers.
St James’s strives to advocate for earth justice and to develop deeper connections with nature.
We aim to be a place where you can belong. We have a unique history, and the beauty of our building is widely known. Our community commits to faith in action: social and environmental justice; creativity. and the arts
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.
It costs £5,000 each day to keep the doors of St James’s open to all who already need us.
A reimagined St James’s realised. A redesigned garden, courtyard and new building capacity—all fully accessible— will provide beautiful spaces for all as well as improving our environmental performance.
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St James's Church 197 Piccadilly London W1J 9LL
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Lucy Ash a British-Canadian visual artist looks at the importance of remembering in relation to her work and the wider world.
We are currently experiencing Autumn. The time of the year that gives us a thrilling colourscape of reds, oranges and yellows, whilst at the same time connecting us to the message of death and rebirth. This season is neatly in synch with Remembrance Sunday (the second Sunday in November) when we commemorate combined UK and Commonwealth casualties since World War One.
Remembrance is a subject which has preoccupied my thinking and work as an artist. The injustice done to the LGBTIQ+ community in the armed forces is shocking and my reflections and meditations formed a large part of my recent exhibition ‘Invisible Portraits’ at Canada Gallery, Trafalgar Square, in collaboration with Southampton City Art Gallery. Canada Gallery’s proximity to Whitehall and the Cenotaph reinforced the importance of Remembrance and highlighted the close ties between Canada and the UK, especially during wartime.
My painting, Symmetry of Carnage, looks at the necessary invisibility of gay men who served in the First World War. Homosexuality was illegal and regarded as deviant and immoral. Consequently, gay men kept a low profile. As much as – perhaps even more than – enemy fire, they feared covert physical and emotional abuse and corporeal punishment if their true identity were revealed. Some deliberately sacrificed themselves and ‘went over’ to save their families from shame.
Symmetry of Carnage 04, oil on linen, 2019–20
The division of this painting into 11×11 rectangles signifies the moment of the end of the war: the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918. Each of the 121 sections is built from thick mud-coloured oil paint tinged with red to mark their blood sacrifice. Within each section a cross represents a gay soldier who had to blend in, in death as in life.
My portraits of Canadian John McCrae, Englishman Siegfried Sassoon and Welshman Wilfred Owen explore the complexity of what’s hidden. Yet their poetry reveals the truth of their lived experience in the trenches and on the battlefield. They bore witness to WWI’s destruction of landscapes and ecosystems, human lives and livelihoods.
The Consciousness of Death, oil and mixed media on linen, 2026
The Consciousness of Death explores John McCrea’s transition from life to death as mind and spirit slip in and out of consciousness and presence. My painting – like McCrea’s poem, ‘In Flanders Fields’ – is inspired by the creative spark that can emerge from heartbreaking loss. The poem can be read as an outpouring of grief at the death of his friend and ‘probable lover’, Alexis Helmer, killed during the Second Battle of Ypres. Poppies in both poem and painting represent the blood of the fallen, the futility of war and nature’s regenerative power.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Wilfred Owen’s poetry brings to life with vivid detail and compassion his lived experience in World War I. Previously war had been depicted as glorious, but Owen radically tells it as it is. He broke new ground both in terms of what he had to say and how he wrote it. His invented ‘half rhyme’ technique reinforces his unsettling voice. ‘I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity’.
The Pity of War, oil on paper, 2022
My painting of Owen conveys the futility of glorifying war through colourful medals and stone monuments. Promoting heroic deeds and nationalistic patriotism leads us again and again to war. Owen condemned the unjust slaughter of a whole generation, eventually including himself. He was killed one week before the Armistice at the age of 25. ‘All a poet can do today is warn. That is why true Poets must be truthful.’
As Autumn leaves whirl round us and through the turning of all seasons it is more important than ever to remember the physical and psychological impact of war on those who serve, those who are displaced, those who wait at home and on the environment. I find it significant to note that the 2026 calendar matches identically the days and months of 1914 and thus makes clear the parallels to the current wars of imperialism and the lack of harmony in the world. We must remember and learn that there will be no lasting human peace nor social justice without reconnecting our wellbeing and equality to the health of the planet and all creation.
