Doughnut Unrolled: Community Portrait of Place
A selection of participatory workshop approaches you can use to explore the four lenses for your place
Version 1.0 (April 2022)
📢 Now translated into French, Spanish, German and Brazilian Portuguese
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Overview
The goal of the Doughnut is to meet the needs of all people within the means of the living planet, but what does this mean for the neighbourhoods, cities, districts or nations where we live?
To help you explore this question we've created Doughnut Unrolled, a concept that takes us from the Doughnut to four 'lenses' that invite you to look at the interplay between local aspirations and global responsibilities in your place – both socially and ecologically – and identify possible entry-points for transformative action.
This tool - Community Portrait of Place - is selection of participatory workshop approaches you can use to explore the four lenses for your place, to create a holistic picture or a 'portrait' of your place's local aspirations and global responsibilities, both socially and ecologically.
- Open the tool in the following languages here:
- Open the Miro canvases in the following languages here:
- All pdf canvases available here
The workshops can be run in-person and online. For the online setting, we've created this set of canvases in Miro (password: fourlenses) that is designed for you to copy, or 'duplicate' into your own Miro account. If you don't have a Miro account, you can create one for free, very easily - that will give you space for three boards.
Community Portrait of Place is one of five Doughnut Unrolled tools that work together to apply the ideas of Doughnut Economics to your place:
- Introducing the four lenses
- Community Portrait of Place (this tool)
- Data Portrait of Place
- Exploring a topic
- Dimensions of the four lenses
Together they help you create a 'Doughnut Portrait' of your place - a holistic picture with diverse inputs and perspectives - that can act as a starting point for transformative action.
Whilst we are launching these tools in English we are also kicking off a process for translating all 5 tools into some languages and we will share more details of this in the following weeks.
Why use it?
Community Portrait of Place enables you to build up a holistic perspective of all the qualitative aspects of what it means for your place to thrive and to help bring humanity into the Doughnut.
It invites the people of your place to share their knowledge, ideas, experience and aspirations, to build a rich picture, or 'portrait' of your place, that can keep evolving as more voices contribute, and as knowledge, ideas, experience and aspirations changes over time.
It beautifully complements the Data Portrait of Place approach, that invites you to build up a holistic picture of the quantifiable aspects of what it means for your place to thrive and to help bring humanity into the Doughnut.
So we invite you to explore both these approaches - Data Portrait of Place and Community Portrait of Place - to build a rich and holistic portrait of your place, that draws upon both data and the many and various contributions from the people of your place.
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Who is it for?
This tool is for anyone who wishes to explore what the ideas of Doughnut Economics means for them in their place.
Important note: If you wish to use these tools as part of your consultancy or professional advisory services for others, then we require that you follow DEAL's policy for consultancies and professional advisors.
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How long does it take?
You can do a quick taster workshop that takes 90 minutes. You can do a half-day or full-day workshop. You can also build up your portrait over time through different methods and with different audiences.
There's a role for all of these approaches, and you might like to start with a quick taster workshop, or a half-day workshop, then think about how you might begin to plan a longer process of building up your portrait over time.
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How many people is it for?
For any one workshop, you'll need to think about how many people can meaningfully contribute. This will be dependent on the size of space you have, the number of facilitators you have, and how people will be invited to share their contributions; e.g. if you map all contributions to one large four-lenses canvas, then you will need to keep the number below or around 40, but if everyone is working in smaller groups with their own canvas, then numbers can be larger.
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What materials do you need?
You'll need to prepare a canvas, either printed or created in-person, or via Miro if online.
You'll need ways for people to contribute their ideas to the canvas, such as sticky-notes or similar.
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What does the facilitator need to know or be able to do?
The facilitator needs to understand the concept of the four lenses, so we recommend you read Introducing the four lenses first.
The facilitator also needs to design the flow of the workshop according to the needs of the group and the intentions you have for the workshop, e.g. to introduce how holistic thinking can be beneficial to connect things and see new opportunities.
In the tool we give some example workshop structures, but there are so many variations that we focused on showing some of the approaches you can take to use in your own workshop design.
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Acknowledgements
This tool was created by Rob Shorter, Leonora Grcheva, Kate Raworth and Andrew Fanning of the DEAL Team, in collaboration with Ruurd Priester.
The four lenses builds upon the methodology of Creating City Portraits co-created with Biomimicry 3.8, Circle Economy, and C40 Cities; and the workshop approaches build upon those developed by Civic Square.
We would like to thank the DEAL Community members who reviewed and tested this tool and offered feedback that helped in its development, including Mat Siffels of Amsterdam Donut Coalition, Ilektra Kouloumpi of Circle Economy, Jonas Boothe of Next Economy Lab (NELA) and Roisin Markham of Irish Doughnut Economics Network (IDEN). For anyone we’ve missed, thank you, and do let us know so we can acknowledge your contribution here.
We would also like to thank Iconmonster for the icons used.
Links
- Open the tool in the following languages here:
- Open the Miro canvases in the following languages here:
- All pdf canvases available here
Feedback
Healthy living systems rely on good feedback loops and we invite your comments, reflections and suggestion from using this tool to help us iterate and evolve for future versions.
You can do this two ways:
- The first is to leave a comment in the section below called Join the conversation. The benefit of this approach is that everyone can see and benefit from what you share.
- The second way is to contact the DEAL Team directly via the contact form and choosing the category 'Tools and Stories'.
Share
Share
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Story
Doughnut Economics in planning and architecture
Webinar recording: Doughnut Economics in urban development and architecture - two case studies from Norway and the UK.
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Story
Neighbourhood Doughnut Portrait Launch
We're excited to introduce you to the first Neighbourhood Doughnut Portrait, painted by many people together in Ladywood
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Story
Launching our Data Portrait as an exhibition
A platform for lots of conversations with people and expanding our network in Minato Ward.
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Story
Community Portrait of Glasgow
Bringing the Doughnut to ‘ARCadia’ - the community launch of University of Glasgow’s Advanced Research Centre
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Story
Applying Doughnut Economics to businesses
Exploring how businesses and community organisations can support the economy of the future.
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Story
Transforming places with the Doughnut - webinar 2
Watch the recording of two local governments working with Doughnut Economics in Brussels, Belgium and Nanaimo, Canada
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Story
Transforming places with DE - webinar 1
Hearing from community-led initiatives in Leeds, UK and Melbourne, Australia
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Member
ger pepels
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Member
Derek von Behr
BrasÃlia, Distrito Federal, Brasil
Architect, urban planner and landscaper
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Member
Carolina Tomaz
Brazil
I describe myself as a XXI century economist, who adopts systemic and transdisciplinary thinking, and understands the world as a complex socio-ecological system. My goal is to work with regenerative projects for the development of inclusive, intelligent, and sustainable cities and communities. I have been particularly interested in applying the Doughnut economy model for cities, business and organisations. I have experience with projects planning and management, structuration and implementation of new governance models, and group's facilitation collaborative methods to co-create more effective and sustainable solutions for social problems. I'm part of the Donut Brasil network, and together we are experiencing the tools and knowledge of the Doughnut Economics in many projects and in the Latin America and Brazil contexts.
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Member
Paul Paxton
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Member
Josef Davies-Coates
Bridport, Dorset, England, UK
@jdaviescoates@social.coop Co-founder @UnitedDiversity @uniteddiversity@social.coop https://unitediversity.coop @SafeJustSpace @doughnuteconomics@safejust.space https://safejust.space @selfhostcloud https://selfhost.cloud @bettermediauk https://bettermedia.uk @open_coop https://open.coop Director @DevelopmentCoop https://development.coop Social Media @UfiTrust https://ufi.co.uk see https://josef.is for more info  Â
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Member
Carra Santos
Bath, BANES, UK.
I'm an established and creative sustainability professional, equipping visionary leaders, educators and advisors with knowledge and navigation tools to step into their sustainable futures roles, through education, strategy and communication. Over 20+ years, my career in creativity, design and communication has evolved from internationally-acclaimed product innovation and future concepts for world-class events, to creative thinking skills for visionary leadership. My approach is influenced by my career origins in multidisciplinary concept generation and development - tapping into food, fashion, interiors, furniture, exhibition, spatial and urban design - and my personal passion, which is exploring how transformative habits, attitudes, practices, behaviours and relationships can be facilitated by forward-thinking design and communication. I began exploring Doughnut Economics around 2017, attending events from 2019, and becoming a DEAL community member on its launch in 2020. My interest in economics increased during my 2021 'Sustainable Development in Practice' Masters dissertation on narrative framing and communication of sustainability practices to UK business leaders, which touched on the difference between degrowth, growth-agnostic and growth-led perspectives. I started the Doughnut Economics group in Bath, UK in 2022, and and continue to support it and a number of councils, universities and enterprises with local outreach and engagement. Email me or join me on LinkedIn.
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Member
Andrew Fanning
Cádiz, Spain
Data Analysis & Research Lead at DEAL. I'm interested in ways to 'translate' the global Doughnut to smaller scales, from neighbourhood to nation (and beyond). Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Leeds. Contact me by going to the DEAL contact form, and select 'Research & Data Analysis'.
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Member
Rob Shorter
Oxford, England, United Kingdom
Communities & Art Lead at DEAL. Excited to explore how the holistic goal of the Doughnut opens a space for collective imagining and action within communities of place and purpose around the world. Get in touch by going to the DEAL Contact Form and selecting 'Communities & Art'