Welcome To Rawluck Launch

The year is 2022 and life has changed in Toronto. It is a dystopian Toronto. There has been an economic collapse and the housing bubble has popped. From poverty to healthcare to immigration and crime, the issues the city faces is like nothing it has seen before.
This is the life Gavin Sheppard desired to share with the world with his new multi-disciplinary web series titled Welcome To Rawluck, as he explained at the series’ launch.
Over a variety of mediums such as video, photography and illustration, the series was something that Sheppard had been playing with for quite a few years as the majority of the themes in the story come from his day-to-day experiences.
“They are human problems. I wanted to explore some of these human problems and these human issues in Toronto, but explore it in a way of a cautionary tale of where we could be headed, but what I wanted to do more than just doom and gloom and dark and grit was to show different realities as well and solutions as well and start to explore those things,” he says, as the web series played behind him to a gathered group, who was silently experiencing the messages Sheppard wanted to share.
Walking into the venue, those who attended the launch were able to get a feel of what the series represents as Sheppard had created the world of Rawluck. After entering with exclusive photo “Toronto Core Cards” that the coordinators had made for guests, they could experience the illustrations and photos of social justice that were placed around the room, where the web series was projected on the wall.
Buruk Early, the photographer responsible for the still photographs for the first episode of the web series, is pleased with the product and even more so, excited about what the series represents and what it can do for the city of Toronto itself. “Welcome To Rawluck shows the raw part, the hood part, the poverty, food banks, the homeless, the people stressed out in their kitchen drinking, reading a Malcolm X book. That is the real feeling that I get from Toronto,” he says.
The plans for the series, according the Sheppard, are to move forward with one episode a month. In order to continue covering such important issues related to our society, he hopes to involve more thinkers and leaders to create a discussion on solutions to underlying issues in our society to represent through the Welcome To Rawluck series.
“What I see it doing for the city is hopefully inspiring dialogue,” he says. “I don’t think any change happens without people talking about it first and realizing that there is a problem.”