Stay up to date with our latest news, competitions and offers. We look forward to staying in touch.
If you are a creative who makes work about men, we would love to hear from you. And not just photographers!
Perhaps you are a performer, or a writer with a monologue that needs to be performed. You could draw from life – as an expert or as a beginner. And we’d love to hear from experimental video makers and conceptual artists. Perhaps you would like to programme WR into your cultural space.
All of us who have already joined the Roar as creatives agree that it feels great to become part of a project that wants to change how the world looks at men.
As a small non-profit, we have limited resources to fund new content, but you can always ask! And we will do everything we can to promote your work on our platform. We know how hard it can be to make yourself heard.
If you would like to submit work for publication or ideas for consideration, please write to creative@worldwideroar.org.
Photographer
Holly is a true polymath! A dance teacher, an actress, a fine art painter and a photographer, Holly has brought a fresh eye to WR photography shoots in London, Manchester and Mexico.
Designer
Holly came to us as a graphic designer and now leads on all aspects of our design.
Our Seeing Men catalogue and virtual exhibition are particularly exciting examples of Holly’s work – don’t miss them!
Art Director / Curator
Keith has a global reputation as a leader within large scale cultural projects, including the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II and the cultural programme of the 2012 London Olympic Games.
As well as art directing shoots in Spain and the UK, Keith curated the Seeing Men exhibition, bringing both his trained eye and deep appreciation of visual art to the Roar.
Videographer
Tom is a highly regarded content creator who has worked with some of the biggest names in UK broadcast television. An athlete and a performer in his own right, Tom will go wherever our guys go to create dynamic, uplifting content that always has a sense of fun.
Art Director
has been an art director in UK television for many years, and came to us through mutual friends from my time in the TV industry. Most recently, Catti worked on our recent Madrid shoot with the Goldbats! Check out our WR23 Calendar to see some of her work.
Photographer
Lucas is known to most Roar supporters for his work in front of the camera but has become a skilled photographer in his own right. Some of his images have featured in our calendars for the last couple of years, and the cover of our WR23 calendar cover was developed from his original concept.
Film Maker
Damien is a skilled film-maker who has been documenting our journey for more than a decade. His unmissable films have become instant classics and set the tone for a decade of WR video content.
Image Retoucher
Our lead image editor, K, likes to stay behind the camera but his vision shines through in every image he produces. As a project that celebrates diversity, WR is particularly proud that our finished images include the perspective of a British artist of Muslim heritage.
Videographer
is a motivated videographer with a strong dedication to relatability, story telling and communication as core values in the work he does. Rio’s ability to capture the dynamism of sport and his flair for creative action shots make him a very welcome new addition to the WR team.
The Worldwide Roar is more than a calendar. Check out our range of digital products to experience the work of all of our creatives. Do let us know if you’d like to join our team!
SEE ALL WR23 PRODUCTSThe 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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!!
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!
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.
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.
If you are an athlete and identify as male, we want to hear from you! Click here to learn more.
