The Van Gogh Experience is a travelling exhibition that will be based in York at St Mary’s just between Coppergate and Castlegate. It describes itself as a 360 degree immersive experience that combines Van Gogh’s life story with his art and is suitable for all ages. We visited as a family first thing on a Friday morning to test those claims.

The interior of the church has been transformed into a cool, calm space that rather than distracting from from the show, adds to it. Rather than hiding the nature of the building, it uses its archways and spaces to neatly frame elements of the experience. A small ante-room has been turned into the bedroom that features in Van Gogh’s work but the rest of the room is simply filled with deckchairs reclined well enough to give one a good field of vision to take in the animations.

We’d worried that the environment would be a little overwhelming for a 17 month old baby but, save for a two minute wobble on entrance, she happily sat for the full 40 minutes or so of the show looking around at the different elements of the presentation and taking it all in. I’m far from an art critic and happy to own up to very limited knowledge in this area, but the experience really did feel as immersive as promised, the music gently complementing the animations that seamlessly flowed around the room to tease out details of individual artworks.

To broaden the experience there’s an optional virtual reality element that takes you on a tour of parts of the artist’s life, neatly framing artworks around “real life” surroundings. I was pushed for time by now and unable to finish it, but £3 didn’t feel like too much of an imposition over and above the ticket price.

We finished our visit by letting Baby Fork loose with some crayons to create an artwork ready for projection on to a wall amongst a range of other masterpieces. It’s no exaggeration to say that she’s not far from matching my notoriously meagre talents in that department.

The Van Gogh experience is with us in York until 5th January 2020 and I’d strongly encourage you to get a visit in before then. It’s a real bonus for our city to see an attraction like this make its UK debut here and is something I’d encourage every York resident to make time for.

Disclaimer: No charge was made for our attendance, opinions are impartial

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House of Koko opened in Chapel Allerton in 2015, offering a great selection of loose leaf teas and Northstar coffee alongside good quality seasonal food. Along with Chris Hale, who made the quarter finals of Masterchef 2016, they’ve redesigned the dining space and menus to be more befitting of such a prestigious building.

The launch evening started with live music and canapés in one of the gallery spaces. I’ve got to hold my hand up to not having made it as far as the Hepworth Gallery before and was impressed with the open space. The canapés reflected what we’d see on the menu later on, featuring fig, avocado and corn fritters with chilli jam. We’d noted that there was a heavy vegetarian slant to the menu that was explained when Sophie and Chris Ball (of House of Koko) introduced themselves, with Sophie being vegetarian and the guys from ‘Koko vegan. It’s clear that there’s a great deal of passion behind this partnership and project. I was interested to hear more about the opportunity for private events at the gallery, in particular it being licensed as a wedding venue.

After talks, we moved downstairs to find Chris (Hale, not Ball. Do keep up!) demonstrating a wild mushroom ragu that he served on sourdough. Clearly it wasn’t practical to cook for a large group from a single portable hob, but Chris made the dish look fantastic with those limited resources before friendly servers arrived en masse to give the rest of us a plate each. This sort of dish is exactly the kind of thing, in my view, that you want from a day out. Good quality produce that was well prepared and didn’t demand a time commitment that would distract from your visit. The rest of The Hepworth Gallery Cafe menu caters well for vegans and vegetarians with gluten free options available too. I love the sound of their homemade baked beans on sourdough.

After eating, we had the opportunity to try a few desserts and some of the well reputed Northstar coffee. The espresso mousse I tried was absolutely fantastic, deliciously light and well balanced. We ended the evening admiring the beautiful plants from Fleurs before making the journey back to York. The evening had shown a really solid start for this new venture that I’m sure will continue to grow strongly. A return visit is definitely on the cards.

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