WR Key Facts

The Roar began in 2009 when male student rowers posed nude to challenge homophobia in sport. The massive global response to the Warwick Rowers naked calendar highlighted how taboos around male nudity relate to wider social problems that affect us all. It kick-started an award-winning campaign to change how we look at men. Thirteen naked calendars later, volunteer athletes from a growing range of sports go totally nude to promote gender equality and human rights, to raise funds for charity – and offer everyone a fresh look at men! Monthly film and image subscriptions allow us to show and say more than our annual calendars, and collectors can buy our iconic books and art prints. It’s all part of an inclusive global conversation about freedom, equality and healthier masculinities. We’re the calendar that began a campaign and became a community. Join us!

We are a team of athletes, artists, film-makers, photographers, designers and organisers, known collectively as the Worldwide Roar. Based in different cities and countries around the world, we all work from home and contribute on an occasional, regular or full time basis. Some of us are paid to provide regular functionality but most of us are volunteers.

Our project grew out of the Warwick Rowers, an amateur naked calendar that started in England in 2009 and went on to produce award-winning calendars for ten years. Now on our third calendar and first exhibition as the Worldwide Roar, we operate as a non-profit campaigning and fundraising organisation.

We want to change how the world looks at men, and how men see themselves. We create and share impactful original content, both freely on social media and through our fundraising products, to promote healthier life choices for men and greater life chances for everyone.

We raise funds for Sport Allies, the registered charity that empowers young people to get the most out of sport and life, regardless of their sexuality, gender identity, race or physical ability. We have also been funding ground-breaking new research by universities in the UK and Canada into how healthier versions of masculinity can make the world a better place.

As a non-profit organisation that operates independently of corporate sponsors, we rely entirely on your support to keep going. We’re dedicated to creating the content you love, and to taking men on a journey that makes them part of the change we all want to see. And of course, we want everyone involved to have fun!

Put our award-winning calendar on your wall or enjoy the whole WR experience with added images and video! Either way, we’ll be with you all year to make every month amazing!

Frequently asked questions

What is the Worldwide Roar?

The Worldwide Roar is a mental health project with a human rights message. Drawing on ten years of learning as the Warwick Rowers calendar project, the Roar campaigns for healthier masculinities, raises funds for charity and supports men to become active partners in creating a more inclusive world that combats structural racism, promotes LGBTQ+ rights and gender equality, and seeks to empower men to become part of the solution in a world that is trying to recover from hegemonic masculinity.

The Roar is intended to open a global, mindful conversation with everyone affected by male mental health and the impact of hegemonic masculinity.

Why the nudity?

Taboos around male nudity reflect deeper, more serious problems: homophobia, misogyny, racism and poor male mental health.

We have always sought to highlight and confront patriarchal privilege and how that manifests within our culture. Consistently over more than a decade, we have seen how the nudity in our project enables men to share new experiences, embrace new perspectives and show their commitment to their goals.

We need alternative perspectives on the human body to those of porn and the commercial objectification of advertising and magazines. We particularly need to see the male body presented in a way that is not an assertion of power but a demonstration of solidarity with the many people who have been disadvantaged by patriarchal, heteronormative male culture.

Over time, we have come to see the male nudity in our project as an opportunity for a male mass participation project with positive, constructive social significance. It remains transgressive to show male genitalia, particularly outside contexts where the visibility of the penis is used to assert male dominance. We need to demystify and democratize masculinity – who gets to define it and who gets to own it.

Is this a student project or a professional enterprise?

What started as a small volunteer project has grown into a flourishing social enterprise where experienced professionals, paid interns and unpaid volunteers work together in a relationship that combines volunteering, mentoring and work experience. It is a cross-generational gay/straight alliance of which we are all very proud!

Why the name change to Worldwide Roar?

Our project promotes gender equality, LGBT rights, better male mental health and the need to address structural racism. We understood that this message of inclusion couldn’t be told by one club or group of men alone.

We are proud of our history as the Warwick Rowers, and we now want to share that history and the incredible experiences it has given us.

We want sportsmen everywhere to feel that they can truly own the future of WR as it continues its evolution into a global campaign for change.

Where does the money go?

As well as delivering a campaigning message of inclusion, the WR project has raised over £250,000 for good causes.

We operate as a non-profit organisation with very few staff or overheads. Contributors appear in our content as unpaid volunteers, we do not maintain premises and paid support is compensated at rates considered reasonable in the non-profit sector.

In particular, we have provided almost all funding for over five years for Sport Allies, a registered charity that seeks out the inspirational stories of athletes, clubs and projects already out there making a difference in sport.

Your support has now allowed us to begin funding an international academic research programme into better male mental health and its impact on society by Leeds Beckett University in England and the University of Calgary in Canada.

Why the Worldwide Roar?

We have kept the initials WR from our original name, because our ten years as the Warwick Rowers are in our DNA.

We are proud of what we achieved as a project in that time, and we look forward to living up to our new name as a global voice for healthier masculinities.

This is the roar of men who are willing to stand up and speak out as allies of change and progress. As more and more athletes join the Roar, we want to make sure its message will be heard around the world. Join the Roar!!

Why isn’t there more diversity in the older images?

Diversity and the celebration of difference is where we began. Our original focus was on how the culture of sport can exclude people on the grounds of their gender or sexuality.

More recently, we have gained a deeper understanding of the extent to which the hegemonic masculinity we seek to challenge is at the root of structural racism. Achieving diverse visibility in the project is now one of our core objectives.

As the Worldwide Roar we offer a platform for men to participate regardless of ethnicity, age, birth gender, sexuality, or physical ability. So if you are an athlete who identifies as male, be part of the change you want to see!

We still have a long way to go and we are particularly keen to increase the visibility within our project of people who are BIPOC, trans or play parasports.

To find out more, go to squadwr.org – we are ready to stand by you and beside you!

Will you still be focused on rowing/rowers?

WR is open to all sports and participants.

Rowing was the first sport to embrace our project at the highest level, and it will always be an important part of the project. We are particularly honoured to have had support and encouragement from three of rowing’s national governing bodies.

Rowing remains a key part of our DNA, and we will always work to maintain our strong connections with British Rowing and the many clubs and individuals in the world of rowing who have supported us over the last decade.

Why Purple and Silver?

We originally chose purple as a colour identified with challenging homophobia. As a mix of blue and pink, we now embrace it as a reflection of the need to create healthier relationships with masculinity, with our birth genders and with our gender identities.

We were also inspired by Alice Walker’s seminal novel, The Color Purple. As one character says, “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” In the same way, we want men to be mindful of their relationship with their masculinity, and we want everyone to stop and feel the joy that this project and its message bring to both our participants and our supporters.

Silver has a specific meaning within the context of our aim to promote healthier masculinity and greater gender equality. Some consider that silver restores equilibrium and stability to both feminine power and spiritual energy.