History

Created by accident

Bart Rouwenhorst, the current festival director, is a Sunday painter. In 2005, he prepared an exhibition in Asten and was looking for 15 red-haired models. With help of an advertisement in the Brabants Dagblad, he didn't get 15 registrations from models, but 150!

Because Bart has trouble saying no, he offered all models to come together in Asten and take a group photo. The meeting was remarkable: redheads from Groningen (in the north of the Netherlands) met redheads from Limburg (in the south of the Netherlands) and it felt like a huge family gathering.

The national press (Hart van Nederland) was also present. Afterwards, many redheads asked Bart to organize a second meeting.

Bart was living in Breda at the time, and in collaboration with friends, neighbours, family, and enthusiastic café managers, he planned the second festival. That was attended by 500 redheads. In the years that followed, the festival grew bigger and bigger, even garnering an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records with 1,672 redheads in one photo.