Redhead Day 2010

The festival started in 2005 unintentionally by the Dutch painter Bart Rouwenhorst in the small Dutch city Asten. As a painter, he was inspired by artists like Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Gustav Klimt. Both of these artists created dramatic portraits of women, and both artists made famous paintings depicting redheaded women.
To follow the footsteps of his favourite painters, Rouwenhorst planned an exhibition of 15 new paintings of redheads. Finding models was problematic, since redheads are rare in the Netherlands, only 2% of the population had natural red hair. To find models, a advertisement was placed in a local newspaper. However, instead of 15, 150 models volunteered. Not wanting to turn down so many potential models, Bart Rouwenhorst decided to choose 14 models, organise a group photo shoot for remaining redheads, and have a lottery to decide by chance who would be the 15th and final model. This happening turned out to be the first redheadday. This year, the focus was on red-haired women only, since they were asked to volunteer to pose for the paintings. At the events in later years, the aim was to attract redheaded men as well as women, but still the sexes are not equally distributed. The first meeting attracted 150 natural redheads. Most attendees wore green clothing by request.
At the time, the event competed for publicity in the local newspapers in Asten with a local pumpkin contest. However, the Dutch national press made the event headline news. The mayor of Asten remarked later that the event led to the first ever front-page publicity about the city of Asten in the national press.