In an effort to highlight blood donation awareness, a Romanian music festival is accepting blood as a form of payment.
The 4 day festival, Untold, located in Romania’s Transylvania region (in the picturesque city of Cluj-Napoca), is capitalising on the region’s vampire folklore with promises of free one-day passes with a blood donation at one of the country’s 42 donation centres. Additionally, those who donate up to 24 July will get 30% discount off the entire festival pass, which lasts 30 July – 2 August.
Untold’s blood payment method is aimed at alleviating the country’s blood shortage problem. Romania, which is a member of the European Union, however yet to adopt the Euro, contains some of the continents lowest blood donation rates, coming in at 1.7% of the population. “Given that Romania faces an acute blood shortage in medical facilities, a campaign that takes inspiration from these myths in order to draw attention to a real problem is more than welcome,” the festival’s director general, Bogdan Buta, has said of the campaign.
Romania’s tourism industry has long embraced the legacy associated with its association to the Dracula legend: Many hospitality institutions adopt vampiric imagery, as well as local merchants embracing its likeness on t shirts and other trinkets. “We were talking about how to incorporate Dracula into our festival and after seeing the numbers and how behind Romania was in blood donations we had this idea,” Untold spokeswoman Stefana Giurgiu said.
As for the festival, the four day affair does not skimp on the proper house beats with a lineup including Sasha, John Digweed, Lee Burridge, Satoshie Tomiie, Maribou State, Livio & Roby, Dense & Pika, and hundreds more.
Source: Fortune
