Design To Distribute: Zine Making for Global Donut Days (Past)

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Agenda

12:00 - 13:00

Light Lunch Is Served From The Floating Front Room

13:00 - 16:00

Design To Distribute: Zine Making Workshops In The Polytunne

About this event

Arts • Craft

Join us as we transform our polytunnel into a zine studio to celebrate Global Donut Days and Neighbourhood Repair Club, an open, creative space to explore how we repair and reimagine our relationships to land, materials and one another through cutting, sticking and conversation.

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Radical Precedents Zine Studio

Dream, make, cut, stick and chat with Byng and Cat from the CIVIC SQUARE team as they host an open zine making studio in celebration of Global Donut Days, drawing inspiration from radical building precedents from around the world, each of which demonstrate different ways that what we design and build together can move us towards safety and justice at local and global scales.

Through collage, drawing, writing, ink stamps and more, we invite you to reimagine your homes, street and neighbourhood/s as life-affirming infrastructure, including dreaming up possibilities for how the Neighbourhood Public Square can support all life, using the Doughnut as a compass and real projects we can take inspiration from.

Zine Making: Neighbourhood Repair

At the same time, Site As A Classroom Artist In Residence Charlotte Bailey will host a zine-making workshop documenting and celebrating repair of land, materials and relationships as we begin to wrap up this season of Neighbourhood Repair Club.

If you've been part of Repair Club in any way this year—or if you haven't yet, and are curious—we'd love to have you with us as we share memories, reflections and questions through drawing, writing and collage.

Our creations will be curated into zines to share our learning, experiences and dreams more widely, in the neighbourhood and beyond.

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ABOUT NEIGHBOURHOOD DOUGHNUT

Through our long-term Neighbourhood Doughnut demonstrator of work, we began focusing on downscaling and co-creating the Doughnut Economics framework to the neighbourhood scale, inspired by Kate Raworth, the team at DEAL, and communities around the world reimagining regenerative economic systems that are distributive by design.

It has been incredible to bring this work to life over the past few years alongside so many peers, partners and neighbours, from an early idea, co-creation weeks and trips to Centre For Alternative Technology, to peer-to-peer learning journeys, festivals and launching the first Neighbourhood Doughnut Portrait in the world in October 2022.

Now the Doughnut continues to sits at the heart of our work as we take ambitious next steps for the design and construction of a Neighbourhood Public Square here in Ladywood, Birmingham, acting as a 21st century compass to orient us to the scale of challenge and opportunity in the face of interconnected challenges, democratising access and contribution to knowledge, data, and collective neighbourhood research practices grounded in the everyday.

Doughnut Economics and the framework’s multifaceted tools (including Kate Raworth’s original 7 Ways To Think Like A 21st Century Economist and the Doughnut’s Four Lenses framework) have been critical to both our ongoing research and the early development of shared metrics of social and ecological thriving.

The more recent publication of the Doughnut for Urban Development Manual by Home.Earth in January 2023 became a key bridge to translate much of these concepts to the built environment. You will find the impact areas of the Doughnut for Urban Development used throughout the forthcoming chapter 8 of the Neighbourhood Public Square publication: Radical Precedents, and these are a live tool for us within our open enquiries into bio-based materials, regenerative building systems, distributive value models and more, galvantised by the amazing work already happening in our neighbourhood and around the world.

Discover more at: bit.ly/NeighbourhoodDoughnut

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ABOUT GLOBAL DONUT DAYS

Now in their third year, Global Donut Days are a four-day festival held in person and online around the world, 14th—17th October 2025.

In a year that marks new levels of gepolitical instability, Global Donut Days celebrate and inspire local action and global connection with Doughnut Economics, building solidarity and a belief that a different future is possible.

Head to the Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL) website to find out more and explore all the events happening for Global Donut Days.

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ABOUT THE SITE

This session takes place in and around the polytunnel on the Neighbourhood Public Square site. As we prepare to begin the construction of Neighbourhood Public Square together, we are very committed and excited to keep the site as open as possible. In order to make this work, we invite you to adopt new postures together with us and adhere to some important principles for taking care and keeping each other safe on site.

— All activity on site is only open to adults and children over the age of 11

— Children aged 11—15 must be accompanied by an adult

— Toilet facilities are available in the park

— There is level access across the site, but the ground is uneven in places, so please do navigate this carefully, and look out for each other too

— Closed toed shoes must be worn on site for your safety

— We will also provide any additional safety equipment that is required on your arrival, including hi vis vests which are to be worn at all times on site

If further information would support your visit, please contact Emily on emilycz@civicsquare.cc.

You can also let us know about any specific access requirements you may have during the sign up process, and where possible we will of course seek to meet these, whilst also being honest about the limitations of the current infrastructure where needed to ensure you have any information you may need before attending.

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ABOUT SITE AS A CLASSROOM

Site As A Classroom is a long-term collective practice to ensure every phase of designing, building, repairing and stewarding the Neighbourhood Public Square site is an open, inclusive, and shared opportunity for learning together in our neighbourhood and beyond.

"Together, we are a commitment to this land as a site of reimagination, reuse and repair; a place to learn, build, eat, grow, care and organise; a home for the capacities, skills and relationships we need to face the challenges and possibilities ahead together, held in common for the neighbourhood for generations to come."

—Neighbourhood Public Square: The Land Story So Far

Our intention is for our team, the neighbourhood, and wider national and industrial scales to learn from the ongoing demonstration through Neighbourhood Public Square in real-time, as well as informing how we learn from what the site, ecoregion, neighbourhood, peers, and precedents can continue to teach us, without end.

This builds on so many experiences we have shared with you all so far including Doughnut Economics Peer-To-Peer Learning Journeys, Ecological Health in Neighbourhoods, Neighbourhood Trade School, Material Matter[s], Re:Builders, Retrofit Reimagined, learning from Centre For Alternative Technology, The Rediscovery Centre, Le Magasin Électrique, Ubele Initiative, Freedom & Balance, and countless others.
Launched more formally in May 2025
, Site As A Classroom is an open invitation to bring the skills you have, your energy, curiosity, and lived wisdoms to help shape and co-produce this next phase of discovery and demonstration together through everyday participation, co-builds and a range of open enquiries that we are excited to share in together.

Find out more: bit.ly/PublicSquareDesign