Should you go to the Van Gogh Immersive (with a 6 year-old)?

Van Gogh Immersive - installation room

“Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.” Vincent Van Gogh

The Van Gogh Immersive is a multimedia installation traveling the world that brings to life Van Gogh’s work and is currently based in London.

Is it worth going to with a 6 year old?

Absolutely.

In fact, the Virtual Reality at the Van Gogh Immersive may have been the most formative art experience to date for of my 6 year-old. The VR is a 10 minute walk through Arles, France where Van Gogh had his most creative period and famously painted The Sunflowers.

Virtual Reality experience walking through Van Gogh’s inspirations in Arles, France.

During the experience, you are led out of the famed “Bedroom” of the Yellow House as though you’re levitating (or on a little amble) through the Provence countryside. Across the forrest you float and then continue to the town of Arles where frames emerge spontaneously to show the inspirations from local scenes in nature for his most famous paintings. Above a cypress tree stars spin into the formation of Starry Night. My 6 year-old, Tallulah thought it was next level TV and reviewed it “best day ever”.

My approach to parenting is to bring my children along to the experiences I want to have and explain why it’s interesting. The walks are adjusted, the curator’s notes skipped and the spice in the curry is dialled down. But the experience makes an impression and it’s our job to bridge the gap with commentary on why it’s important and how it fits into our values.

“This time it’s just simply my bedroom, only here colour is to do everything, and giving by its simplification a grander style to things, is to be suggestive here of rest or of sleep in general.” Vincent Van Gogh

My favourite aspects for children are the furniture or streets that are blown up and recreated directly out of his paintings. For example, they’ve created a life sized model of “The Bedroom in Arles”. Or stand on the street outside the Yellow House he shared with Gaugin.

There’s also a colouring room where all of us created our own masterpieces and then projected them onto the framed gallery wall.

The main event is a dreamy video instillation room with blankets and scattered sun chairs under a sky of stars. Lounge back and watch Van Gogh’s work dance to life in a mesmerising choreography on the double story walls. Blending and bleeding into the next phase of his work on a 30 min loop. It’s impressionist meditation.

We visited for half-term and I was surprised there weren’t more children because it gets high marks for explaining Van Gogh to young children, who can get lost in all the framed work at a gallery. Just the pure repetition of his most famous paintings are sure to have imprinted themselves on our kid’s brain forever.

In London, the Van Gogh Immersive is located in a pop-up gallery on Commercial St (Liverpool Street Station) which is near Spitalfields Market for the perfect food and art pairing. It’s open until the end of May when it will move on to Bristol.