It’s one of the biggest arts events in Bristol this summer - but people buying tickets to the ‘Van Gogh Immersive Experience’ in the city are paying up to £9 more than the event in other cities.
The Immersive Experience arrives in Bristol next month after successful tours of Europe, the US and other parts of the country, but it is the ticket prices that have been raising eyebrows among arts fans in Bristol.
The exhibition event was announced earlier this month and organisers said tickets to the event at the Prop Yard venue on The Feeder near Temple Meads would ‘start from £21.90’.
Read more: An Immersive Van Gogh exhibition is going to take over Bristol's Propyard and it looks incredible
The Van Gogh Immersive Experience begins in Bristol on April 9 and will run right throughout the summer until September. It’s not the only Van Gogh Immersive Experience in the UK at the moment.
Other events have already opened at St Mary’s in York, and at the All Saints church venue in Leicester, and will continue there until the end of August.
Although the event was first launched in Bristol in February with an announcement that tickets would ‘start at £21.90’, since that announcement, ticket prices have changed. Anyone buying tickets for the Bristol event will be asked for £16 for an adult ticket from Monday to Friday, with £22 being the entry price on Saturdays and Sundays.
At Leicester and York, however, tickets are considerably cheaper - both venues have a flat £13 ticket price regardless of what day of the week it is. The event is also taking place at the same time in London at the trendy Commercial 106 venue in Spitalfields. Tickets in London are £19.90 during the week and £24.90 per adult on Saturdays and Sundays.
Bristol Live asked the organisers of Bristol’s Immersive Experience why there was a difference in ticket prices that made the event in Bristol up to £9 more expensive than York or Leicester. The events in Bristol and London are being supported by event organisers Fever, who told Bristol Live that they weren’t involved in the ones in York and Leicester, which were only being run by another organisation called Exhibition Hub.
They said the events in York and Leicester do not offer ‘additional rooms’ that are to be found at the London and Bristol venues. These include a ‘one-of-a-kind VR experience’ which offers a ten-minute narrated journey through Arles in France, and displays a day in the life of Van Gogh through his most famous paintings.
The Bristol and London venues also have a separate ‘interactive drawing room’ where guests can ‘explore their own artistic streak and have their art scanned and digitally displayed on a projector. The York and Leicester venues are smaller, and therefore cost less to hire than the Bristol and London ones, Bristol Live was told.
The chief executive of Exhibition Hub, which is staging the event, is Mario Iacampo. "Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience combines a visually stunning, large scale video projected content with a unique VR experience on Van Gogh’s paintings, and also offers attendees the opportunity to learn more about his work and discover his life," he said.
"This experience is brought to you by Exhibition Hub and Fever, and has awed audiences in Europe and Asia since 2015. We are excited to bring the experience to Bristol in April and look forward to welcoming Bristolians into our 2,700 square metre venue, Propyard, to experience Van Gogh’s paintings and life like never before. As we open in different cities, ticket prices are adjusted accordingly to account for varying venue, supply chain and staffing costs," he explained.
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