So is it St Peter’s or is it Sudbury Arts Centre? And the answer is that the building is St Peter’s and the operations inside it run by the Bridge Project is well, whatever the Bridge Project wants to call it and they have chosen the name Sudbury Arts Centre.

If you ask the Churches Conservation Trust, the landlords for the Bridge Project’s operations in St Peter’s, they say categorically the name of the building is St Peter’s. If you ask most of the people of Sudbury they will refer to the building as St Peter’s. But you might notice there is absolutely no signage on the building to say what the name of the building is and if you look at the Sudbury Arts Centre website they say “Sudbury Arts Centre, formerly St Peter’s Church”.

There are good reasons to use the name Sudbury Arts Centre if you are trying to attract new footfall into the building. Footfall that might not be attracted into a church building – but maybe the Bridge Project and its advisers could be a little less dogmatic on this point. They could allow St Peter’s signage on the building and they don’t need to punish hirers of the building referring to it as St Peter’s. These though are early days for St Peter’s new management team and we are confident this issue will be resolved in the fullness of time with goodwill on all sides.

We hope to meet with the Churches Conservation Trust soon and this will be one of the topics to be discussed.