🏳️‍🌈 Help us bring forgotten, queer history to life—through virtual reality.🎭

Urgent: Support the Groundbreaking, Immersive Experience That Reclaims & Preserves Queer History

We’re New Canvas, an award-winning immersive media studio, raising funds to produce When Brooklyn Was Queer as a groundbreaking VR experience based on the best-selling book by historian, Hugh Ryan.

This isn't just about the past—it’s about telling our stories on our own terms, in bold new ways, at a time when queer visibility is under threat.

🎯 Our goal:
Raise $100,000 to move the VR experience 75% closer to full production. (We are actively in discussions with distribution partners to close out the outstanding 25% needed to meet our full production budget.) We’re already halfway there—thanks to international co-financing, equity and tax incentives through New Canvas (based in Australia). This crowdfunding campaign gets us the rest of the way.

🌈 Where Your Donation Goes

Your gift directly fuels:

- Onboarding key crew members (i.e. Creative Director, 3D Designer, Casting Director)

- Casting, worldbuilding & design

- Volumetric Capture (a filming technique that captures a three-dimensional space, such as a location or performance)

- Marketing polish & distribution readiness

And—we’re giving 10% of all funds raised to two incredible LGBTQ+ organizations doing essential frontline work:

🔸 Free to Be Youth Project – (Urban Justice Center)

The only legal services org in the U.S. focused on low-income and homeless LGBTQ+ youth. They fight for housing, safety, immigration, name changes and so much more.

🔸 Drag King History

Founded by drag king legend Mo B. Dick, this essential archive documents the art and legacy of drag kings, past and present—and was recently added to the Library of Congress.

Together, with these two orgs, our collective work helps preserve the past, present and future of our queer communities. (And we’re proud to uplift them! ) Join us. Let’s make space—and protect it.

🗓️ Why Now?

With censorship rising and vital support systems crumbling, When Brooklyn Was Queer offers radical resistance through immersive VR storytelling that centers queer lives across time.

News of the project was picked up by various media outlets, when we announced it. Then, WBWQ was one of 16 projects selected for the Venice Production Bridge. Since then, we've gained significant interest from major venues and cultural institutions, including: Lincoln Center, the NXT Museum, Tribeca, Venice Immersive, Raindance, the Barbican, Forum des Images and more. We also hosted IG chats with our WBWQ creative team and our campaign partners (Free to Be Youth Project and Mo B. Dick of Drag King History). During Pride month, Hugh Ryan & WBWQ Showrunner Wadooah Wali were guests on the Rainbow Country podcast with host, Mark Tara and the WBWQ producing team was interviewed by GALECA (the LGBTQ+ Society of Entertainment Critics. And in August 2025, we held a powerful industry table read with artists and funders from around the world.

Now, with anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric escalating, we believe:

📣 Art is resistance. Storytelling is protest. Presence is power.

This isn’t just history. It’s happening now. And this project ensures we aren’t erased.

✊🏽 What Makes This Project Special?

🗽 When Brooklyn Was Queer is based on real people—queer laborers, drag kings, sex workers and activists—whose stories have been buried for too long.

🎭 It’s created by an incredible, diverse team of LGBTQ+ AND allied creatives, including:

- Hugh Ryan (he/him), queer author and EP

- Elliot Page & Pageboy Productions (queer activist-led co-production partner)

- MA Productions (queer-led co-production partner)

- Wadooah Wali (she/her), New Canvas Black, lesbian showrunner/producer

- Yasmin Elayat (she/her), Emmy-winning, Egyptian-American, female director

- Elliott Mitchell (he/him), technical director

- Agnes Borinsky (she/they), award-winning trans playwright

- Chanel Crichlow (she/they), award-winning, Black, lesbian composer

- Michela Marino Lerman (she/her), acclaimed tap dancer & creative movement director

- Matt McCorkle (he/him), Emmy-nominated sound designer and audio engineer

- LaJuné McMillian (they/them), multidisciplinary artist & Creative Technologist

-- And you, our extended community.

📲 As mainstream platforms de-prioritize queer stories, we’re building space in new mediums—where we set the rules and where our stories can live without gatekeepers.

🖤 Bonus Perk: Community-Only Events

We’re exploring a backer-only table read or live virtual event featuring our artists and community partners—your support makes these experiences possible. Additionally we’ll share bts content and backers will have access to updates and first looks as they become available.

🚀 Join Us & Donate Today 🎭 –

Your support means more than ever. Together, we can reclaim the past, empower the present and shape the future.

🧡 Share with your networks—your voice amplifies this story

🏳️‍🌈 Be Part of the Movement – Stand with us in ensuring the LGBTQ+ community is seen, heard and remembered.

Follow this project & sign up to be notified at www.wbwq.lgbt and follow us on IG: @whenbkwasqueer_xr/

👉 Click the button to donate now. Meet us in this moment. Help us power this movement and be part of history!