News - The Fitzrovia Chapel

Could you be our new Team Support Coordinator?

We are recruiting for a Team Support Coordinator to lead on administrative and hands-on help to all parts of chapel life, focusing on weddings, events and maintaining the amazing building. The Fitzrovia Chapel is a unique central London venue, a classical and yet unconventional architectural wonder with an innovative and high-quality cultural life. We provide a secular space within a listed building for wedding ceremonies, celebrations, live performances, art exhibitions and filming. We are looking for a meticulous, customer-service-driven person to join our small team. You will be motivated to deliver exceptional service and will be incredibly organised. You will...

Exhibition, History, News, Photography

Lee Miller: Nurses

Exhibition open to public 11 May – 5 June Open Tuesday – Saturday 11-6 and Sunday 12-5 Closed Mondays and Sat 28, Sun 29 May and Wed 1 June The Fitzrovia Chapel is proud to announce our exhibition Lee Miller: Nurses held in conjunction with the Lee Miller Archives, and forming part of our ongoing cultural programme relating to the history of the chapel as part of the former Middlesex Hospital. Lee Miller is an iconic name in the world of photography and art, with a career that spans many realms from modelling to Surrealism to gourmet chef. She is most renowned,...

Art

Caroline Walker: Birth Reflections

CAROLINE WALKER Birth Reflections 18 February – 4 March 2022 The Fitzrovia Chapel is proud to present an exhibition of new large-scale paintings by artist Caroline Walker. They follow her recent residency at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson maternity wing at University College Hospital (UCLH). Caroline Walker is known for painting women at work and often behind the scenes, from hotel maids to her own mother. This new series of paintings sees her capture midwives, doctors, cleaners and mothers, and is inspired by a series of four paintings by Frederick Cayley Robinson ‘The Acts of Mercy’. These large paintings, measuring 200...

Art, Fashion, History

LEIGH BOWERY Tell Them I’ve Gone to Papua New Guinea

The Fitzrovia Chapel are delighted to announce an exhibition to celebrate the life and work of renowned performance artist Leigh Bowery. The chapel is the only remaining building of the Middlesex Hospital, where Leigh died from AIDS on New Year’s Eve 1994. Leigh is a legendary figure who spans the worlds of art, fashion, dance, club and music. Essentially he himself was the living breathing work of art, his now iconic designs and costumes were ubiquitous and meant for Leigh, as he pushed his body through ever more extreme creations, designed to shock and thrill onlookers from dance floor to...

Community, News

Share your views about the Fitzrovia Chapel

The Fitzrovia Chapel has stood in the very heart of Fitzrovia, central London, since 1891. Firstly as the chapel of the Middlesex Hospital and most recently as a building in its own right. It reopened in 2015 as a heritage space and charity for arts and the community. Happily opening again after lockdown (our first open day is Wednesday 19 May), we’d love your views about bringing the chapel further out into the community so that even more people can visit, learn, be inspired and enjoy the beauty within its walls. Whether you are a Fitzrovia resident, worker or visitor...

Weddings

Tips for Creating a Beautiful Wedding during Covid-19

Now that the government has told us that weddings and civil partnership ceremonies in the UK must currently be held with no more than 15 guests, the Fitzrovia Chapel, with its focus on intimate ceremonies, has come into its own. And after having hosted nearly ten ceremonies under the new guidelines (and having spoken to lots of couples along the way), we’ve put together a small list of tips to creating a beautiful wedding. We hope you find them useful. What are the current guidelines on weddings? From 28 September no more than 15 people can legally attend a...

Art, News, Photography

With Fists, it Kicks, it Bites

The Royal College of Art and associated Fitzrovia galleries are delighted to announce the collaborative exhibition With Fists, It Kicks, It Bites. The exhibition by the 2020 graduating students of the RCA MA Photography course, will be divided across the physical gallery spaces of Edel Assanti, TJ Boulting and Webber Gallery, as well as the beautiful and historical location of The Fitzrovia Chapel. Coming together to support the emerging generation of artists, the galleries are thrilled to be able to present to the public the exciting, assertive and experimental work currently made. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, the RCA had to...

Art, Community, News

Artist Tom Croft Brings Portraits of NHS Heroes to Fitzrovia Chapel

Artist Tom Croft has created a virtual exhibition (installed and scanned observing strict government guidelines) at the Fitzrovia Chapel showcasing portraits of NHS staff, created during the current crisis. The exhibition incorporates work by 15 artists, all members of the Contemporary British Portrait Painters (CBPP), which represents many of the top portrait painters living and working in the UK. The display, which is exclusively available online, was installed and scanned at the chapel. The virtual exhibition celebrates frontline workers through portraiture and will raise funds for NHS Charities Together, to help support to the ongoing COVID-19 relief effort. Portraits of...

Architecture, Art, History

From living room to chapel room

We hope you’re all safe, healthy and happy at home. If you’re missing the chapel, however, we might have the perfect thing. As part of our programme of trying to bring the best of the chapel to you while we’re all staying more at home, we’ve added a beautiful 3D virtual tour on to our website. Click on the link here and experience the calm and beauty of the chapel from your living room. But wait, it’s also informative! As you virtually wander round the chapel, click on the coloured circles and find out historical or cultural snippets about the...

Photography

Revisit The Ward

On the day the incredible Nightingale Hospital, built in just nine days to treat coronavirus patients , has opened in London, we also pay tribute to another hospital with an extraordinary purpose. When the chapel was part of the Middlesex Hospital, the Broderip and Charles Bell wards were some of the few dedicated AIDS wards that existed in London. Gideon Mendel‘s photographs from 1993 show how these wards became more like a second home and the staff and patients friends. The Broderip was opened by Diana, Princess of Wales in 1987. This was the era before antiretroviral medications had become...

Community, News

Faye Hughes to step down as the Fitzrovia Chapel’s artistic director in spring 2020

Faye joined the chapel in the summer of 2016 as the its founding artistic director. In addition to her successes in establishing the chapel’s essential business strategy, including exciting and enduring partnerships with galleries, festivals and brands and as Westminster’s leading wedding venue, she designed and curated the cultural programme, Lineage. Lineage, which includes an annual exhibition, wireless audio events and heritage days, all root visitors in the strong sense of history within the Fitzrovia community. It has enabled exploration of cultural, sociological and historical influences of the chapel, the former hospital and Fitzrovia. The programme began the important work...

News

We’ll be shut for a while

Dear Chapel Friends, The government advised us all yesterday that we should stop non-essential contact with others and unnecessary travel. They have also asked us to avoid social venues. As you know, this advice is in relation to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. To help protect our visitors, staff, volunteers and the wider community, we have decided to close the chapel for open days, Season by Season and Wireless Contemplation events for the time being. This means our 25 March Women of Fitzrovia and 15 April Season by Season events will no longer go ahead. We will also be closed on...

News from the chapel