Barefoot Man are launching their sixteenth annual calendar, of naked sportsmen who can connect with themselves and the world around them in a more natural way. The project began in 2009 as the Warwick Rowers naked calendar, and their stunning new 2025 calendar has just as many men just as naked!

It all started with male student rowers posing nude to challenge homophobia in sport. We've featured their naked bodies on OutUK for quite a few years now as their calendar is one of the most popular of the Christmas fundraisers. We're glad these very fit sportsman want to show off their fantastic physique because there's a serious message behind their nudity. They raise money for Barefoot Sport Allies, a charity that helps to make sport more inclusive and open a global, mindful conversation with everyone affected by male mental health issues.

What used to be called the Warwick Rowers changed to Worldwide Roar so those from a broader range of sporting backgrounds could come together and share new ways to experience life as men. Just over a year ago they widened their search even more with a further change of name to Barefoot Man and seven National Calendar Awards later, they are enabling people around the world of every gender and sexuality to explore their relationships with men and masculinity.

Their work and particularly their use of male nudity has long interested academics. They have watched a simple naked calendar evolve into a health promotion and human rights project that enables participating sportsmen to confront their privilege, develop healthier masculinities and become active advocates for inclusion.

In a brand new OutUK exclusive interview we've been talking with Photographer and Founder Angus Malcolm:

So Angus, how have the pictures changed from the type of picture you took in 2009 to the type of picture that you've taken for 2025?
Well, they've changed in quite lot of ways. I think speaking specifically about the calendar, we were at a point where there were naked calendars everywhere, and there were quite a lot of conventions around how these calendars had to be done. There was this cheeky boldness and it was naughty but nice. It was like you didn't ever see anything, but you thought you might.

There was an almost militaristic kind of formation, which of course suited us, as we had lots of athletes of similar heights and builds. One of the things that changed over the years was that as the fame of the project grew, these boys who were just students at an English university, changed their bodies to become more and more like supermodels. They would start training in January for the calendar shoot in June, because it was a big deal for them.

When we did the first calendar it sold to I think maybe 300 friends and families and they said well that's as big as we're ever going to get. I said no, I don't think so, and once they started realising that there was a global audience of thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, they were like oh, we've really got to put some extra effort into this. As the images progressed and as our message changed, we started playing with the calendar form more. We started playing with masculinity. We started exploring more things that we could do, like taking the piss out of the privilege of these young men, with shots of them drinking Pimm's by the pool at a country house.

I think the big change didn't happen with the calendar, but with the rest of our project - and that was the full frontal nudity that we put into our books. There came a point in about 2014-15 where we'd done our US tour and been interviewed by the New York Times. It was all terribly exciting, but we started seeing a few people say yeah, this is just a bunch of straight guys doing what straight guys always do to gay men. They're basically teasing them with the promise of sharing their bodies with them, but really they're not.

So, I talked to the boys about this and we decided to include full frontal nudity in our coffee table books. It was us demonstrating that the men in our pictures were genuinely committed to vulnerability. It was about men with privilege recognising that if you have privilege and no vulnerability, you're a God in this world, and too many men are Gods in this world. Our guys were almost all from rich families. They had often gone to public school, private school for people outside the UK, and they were at an elite university, and they were going on to big degrees and important careers as they all have. But here just for us they are getting naked and making themselves vulnerable, even though nothing in their lives obliged them to.

Calendar sales fund Sport Allies, a UK registered charity set up in 2014 and dedicated to making sport more inclusive. The charity has just rebranded as Barefoot Sport Allies to celebrate the calendar's role in its development. Their Mission is to promote sport, and especially team sport, as an inclusive and supportive route to personal growth for everyone.

Their work is informed by the following core principles:

• Without inclusivity, there can never be equality of opportunity.
• Everyone should have the opportunity to explore their talent and turn it into personal success and a positive contribution to society.
• Any group of people, whether a corporate board or a sports team, will become stronger by recruiting from the entire pool of talent.
• Team sport offers unique opportunities for promoting diversity and enabling personal growth.

They believe sport offers far more than just physical benefit. Sport enables young people to explore their potential, make life-long friends and develop a wide range of skills that are applicable in the wider world. They believe that everyone should have access to sport and the opportunities it provides, and that sport should play a central role in enabling a more diverse and inclusive world. Their Vision is a world where sport is a leader in promoting diversity.

Author Angus Malcolm worked on developing innovative health promotion techniques during the HIV epidemic of the 80s and 90s before working as a development producer at the BBC. He now brings his experience to Barefoot Man and is working on his first novel, Be A Man.

Angus thinks all men should take responsibility:
It's easy for men to blame problems like misogyny, homophobia, racism, abusive pornography and male violence against women on a few bad guys. The reality is that men who aren't actively working to change things are complicit in maintaining a world where bad guy behaviour is still ok.

You've only got to look at the more than half dozen male TV presenters who have been taken off our screens in the past 12 months because of inappropriate sexual behaviour or misogyny to see that this is true. You realise quite quickly just how much of a problem this is in the entertainment industry, in sport and in every day life. The mistaken and out of date view that one class of person, namely straight white men, is better than any other needs to be eradicated. It's time our society respected every individual for the unique contribution that they can make.

Angus goes on to say:
It is not about where you put your penis, or what colour it is, or how politely and consensually you introduce it to the world. The clue is that you have one. Men live in, and help to maintain, a system that has benefitted them at the expense of others. It is only by acknowledging our privilege as men and the damaged version of masculinity that has poisoned the lives of many, including men themselves, that we can escape this legacy. We can find our own freedom by helping others to find theirs. As allies.

Angus, it's quite obvious that in the first calendar of 2009 there were very few, if any, gay men featured. If you look at latest pictures it's clear that there are several gay guys involved. How did this happen?
Well, Yes. I think that there's a kind of basic reason for that. Our project is very well known within the LGBT community. Most of our supporters who are men are LGBT, and they see this project and they think I want to be part of it. So the people come to us and say, "Can I get involved? Can I get naked in your calendar?" It's the gay men who are the ones who know about it. The straight men I have to go out and actively recruit, and explain who I am and what I do, and why they should get involved.

And you know, A lot of them, once they hear the story and understand the story, they say, okay, but it's the people who come to us who tend to be the queer men. What I love is, for example, is when we work with the Manchester Spartans. They are an inclusive rugby team. Half the guys are actually straight and they've come into this gay rugby team, what was originally an all gay rugby team and now it's an all inclusive rugby team, because straight guys have joined because they like the culture more. It's more fun to be with a team of guys when half the guys are gay. and at one point I had them all naked in the changing room together. It's like, how do you feel about the fact that half of you are having a different experience of being naked in the changing room together. For some of you, this is going to have some kind of obvious erotic potential. And for the rest of you, it's almost a case of just don't look at the others, you know? But actually, they're like yeah, we love it.

We love being able to confront those different perspectives and explore them. And so, I love to bring together a mix of different sexualities, because for me, those boundaries are quite artificial anyway.

There's a lot more sensuality to the pictures now, isn't there, a lot more than the pictures in the past.
I think so, and I think that we're probably more comfortable with that now. I remember I was in LA with Lucas, one of our longtime participants who you spoke to a couple of years ago on OutUK, and we were talking to a management company about potentially taking us on. I don't think anybody in LA really knows how to handle us, but she said, the thing is your content is too sexual - and Lucas said, well I disagree, you show me then.

He put the calendar down and said, you show me a image that's too sexual. She was flicking through and he said, it's erotic, but not sexual, there's a difference. And she looked at him and she said, you're right, you're absolutely right, this is not sexual, this is not sexualised. But I think that sensual is fine, this is about people's bodies, they're sharing their bodies with us, they're inviting us to look at them, it should be sensual.

More Pictures and More of our Interview about Barefoot Man

You can purchase a Calendar direct from the Barefoot Man Website for just £21.99. You'll also find loads of other items on their website including photo sets, film downloads, signed limited editions and picture profiles of some of the guys. There's also their coffee table books like WR, Freedom and Manifesto, which feature exclusive pictures from previous years.

A proportion of every sale is donated to Barefoot Sport Allies, a charity that aims to combat homophobia in team sports and to promote an inclusive and supportive route to personal growth for everyone.

See the Barefoot Sport Allies website: sportallies.org
Tweet Sport Allies @SportAllies: twitter.com/SportAllies
Find Sport Allies on Facebook here: facebook.com/SportAlliesCharity