Community indicators of living well

Some insights, questions and resources arising from a peer-to-peer exploration into community indicators of living well

Posted by Rob Shorter July, 01, 2025 2 likes

Introduction

In June 2025, DEAL hosted two peer-to-peer sessions exploring the topic of Community indicators of living well. The topic is large, and can be interpreted in lots of different ways. For example: What is community? What is an indicator? What is living well? So this exploration was a start.

The sessions attracted a diverse group to explore the topic, which allowed us to hear new perspectives and cross-pollinate these perspectives to potentially arrive at new and unexpected understanding.

We covered lots of things and this is a summary of the key themes that emerged, including the questions asked, insights shared and resources shared.

The purpose of this story is to contribute the learnings into our collective commons of knowledge. You might find things here that are useful for you today, and this story will also form a foundation to serve further explorations on the topic.

If you would like, you are welcome to leave your own comments, with questions, insights and resources, at the bottom of the story. And feel free to share this with other people who you think may find it interesting or useful.

And you can find more community-focused events, tools and stories here.

Sharing a DEAL perspective

We started by looking at the framework called the 'Four Lenses' that invites people to explore what it means to live well, in a thriving place, whilst respecting the wellbeing of all people and the health of the whole planet.

The purpose of the Four Lenses is to help people create a holistic picture or 'portrait' of what it means to live well in a place, and contribute to humanity getting in the Doughnut.

Zooming in, the purpose of indicators in the 'local-social lens' of the Four Lenses (bottom left of the image below) is to show what it means for a community to live well.

The purpose of the indicators connects to the purpose of the Doughnut Portrait, and the purpose of the Doughnut Portrait connects to the purpose of the Doughnut - to show a goal for humanity - to meet the needs of all within the means of the living planet. In this way, the purposes are aligned from indicator to global goal.

Where purpose is misaligned or missing

Through our discussions some examples surfaced where the purpose of creating indicators was misaligned with the goal of the Doughnut, and sometimes where a wider purpose was altogether missing.

For example, someone shared that often, in the realm of 'measurement and reporting', the purpose and design of reporting standards is 'in order to report' so the output, the visual, the artefact, the dashboard is what's of substance and importance - not, for example, the transformation of governance or exploration into how we align with a purpose and how we orient organisationally or as a community, or how we make decisions and plan.

The insight then shared was that indicators in the absence of understanding what we're trying to accompany them - informing how we see things, make sense of them, make decisions collectively, serve the best interests collectively - is somewhat empty. Are we just getting to an end point of having something so people can see stuff, regardless of how meaningful that end point is?

And in terms of misalignment, some people raised how some developers are interested in community indicators to show how communities have been consulted before a development, for example the number of hours of community engagement (how many people showed up for how long). But that the developers purpose is to maximise financial return, which is often at odds to the community benefit it has the potential to create.

This opens the deep and fascinating topic of enterprise design and redesign. For further reading on this check out the Doughnut Design for Business tool.

Community-led purpose

In a work-in-progress tool from DEAL - co-designed with members of the DEAL Community - called 'What is a Doughnut Portrait?' (due to be launched during Global Donut Days 2025), part of the tool invites a community leadership group to design a process that 'collectivises the why' of why a community might want to create a Doughnut Portrait, before choosing how to bring indicators to the process.

Here are a few steps from the draft tool:

And the tool offers a way to surface a 'collective why' through a group exercise.

This process of 'finding our why' through a collective community process is an important foundation from which to start exploring community indicators of living well.

The value of co-design

A clear theme from our explorations was how much value lies in the process of co-design.

One example shared was an insight from a talk by 'Beyond the Box' at the London School of Architecture which was about the co-design process of a use of a meanwhile-space in London. They highlighted how much the young people in the process learned, including how to navigate conflict, feeling empowered, feeling heard, being able to articulate ideas. And they shared how important it was to make this less-tangible value visible.

Looking at the co-design of indicators, we were wondering how much value could be created in a community if the community co-designed the indicators? And what forms of value would be created?

For example, if a community co-designed their own indicators of living well, might that build a sense of power, voice, choice, agency, new skills, and neighbourly connection?

And what if this was an essential precursor to the community (and all actors in a place) taking action - a foundation upon which to build deep, lasting community-led change?

In Melbourne, Regen Melbourne is collectivising the process of imaging and creating community indicators of living well at the street level. They have a demonstrator called '300,000 Streets' where they are using the street as a unit for change. They're asking what are the indicators at the street level that help Melbourne move away from top-down decision making, and instead use indicators as a tool to build agency.

"When you move away from a 'top-down' indicator approach, to a bottom-up approach you can ask how does a community capture data to ensure there's visibility? And can we build out community indicators at the city scale, with a participatory process that smaller-scale communities can drop it down to the street or neighbourhood scale?"

(To learn more, you can connect with Regen Melbourne and their 300,000 streets project here www.regen.melbourne/300000-streets)

Another example that was shared (in the zoom chat) was around starting with those most adversely impacted in today's economy:

"I like this discussion of soft and cultural indicators—for me a big win was to have community members most adversely impacted in the leadership and decision making roles for local health equity efforts. Set the table. Support community to step into these roles. Then they are the representatives for the efforts at a national level."

And if you're interested in this topic - exploring ways to work with communities most adversely impacted in today's economy - you might be interested in this peer-to-peer session in July.

Lastly, on the topic of process, some people reflected that indicators and process can interweave through a process of co-creation, in a non-linear way:

"To me the wellbeing indicators are a baseline (with numbers and short answers) and a start for conversation about shared values for co-creation of projects... then come back and measure wellbeing impacts over time."

There is no doubt much more to explore on the topic of process, but this was a fine start.

Type of indicators

So now diving into the topic of the indicators themselves, there were so many types of indicators that were mentioned. Here are a few of them (and you can see examples in the next section called 'Long list of indicator ideas shared'):

Indicators that look beyond quantifiable data and go into qualitative feelings, experiences and perspectives about things.

Indicators that reveal 'life and experiences through the eyes of people' related to specific local challenges, such as mobility or access to food, and as such, create a narrative of a place.
Indicators that people can see and experience every day.
Indicators that people can participate in meaningfully to understand how they can affect it and bring about positive change through their behaviour and influencing the behaviour of their network of relationships?

Indicators that are accessible for everyone to understand.

Indicators that tell a story and history of a place, that might be superficial at first glance, but actually go very deep into what it means to live well in your place.

Indicators that are around the things we want to bring about, like neighbours knowing each other and getting to relationships of trust, mutual aid and reciprocity. Things like the number of neighbours that borrow things from, and share with each other, or lend each other ingredients.
Indicators that gesture towards a different way of being in the world.

Many of these types of indicators touch on the topic of 'Hermeneutical justice' - a complex term that was shared that refers to the social and structural conditions that enable or hinder the ability of individuals and groups to understand, interpret, and communicate their experiences.

We sat with the question of how far might we lean into measurement and indicators and data whilst realising there are some things we are never going to be able to really articulate with language. And we pondered whether it would be possible to find the right balance of articulable indicators and inarticulable experiences when collectively exploring what it means for a community to be 'living well'?

Another question we sat with was 'what makes a meaningful metric'.

Someone shared that to explore this we can look at a system, and look at what tensions the metric is surfacing within the system, such as conflicting values, goals of roles of stakeholders in the community.

One approach shared was called 'transformational collaborative outcomes management' that's based on looking at the needs and strengths of individuals, families and communities. Then to look at the action level associated with their needs. So for example, a number that corresponds to the severity of need, along a scale. So is there immediate action for that need that's required? Or is there an identified need but we don't know yet what the situation involves right now? Or is there no need? From there you can address needs as well as identify strengths.

Another big topic that was raised but not explored, was how indicators can be measured over time. One to come back to.

Long list of indicator ideas shared

In the sessions we shared examples of the types of indicators we'd like to see, as inspiration. Here's the list!

- The number of girls riding bikes (to school)
- The number of kids playing in the streets
- The number of neighbours visiting each other’s houses
- The number of neighbours who know each other
- The number of free days/vacation days
- The number of kilos of waste transported out of a place
- The ratio of cobblers/shoe repair people per capita, because it says something about resource use
- The number of bicycles on the road
- How many coopted farmers markets
- The frequency of use of a space, e.g. pedestrians in a certain street etc.
- Sharing service potential. Mapping sharing services, and measuring the availability to share/borrow things per neighbourhood.
- The number of public spaces meeting basic criteria for accessibility
- The number of people gathering
- The number of intergenerational gatherings
- The number of people stressed about meeting rent
- The number of people who feel belonging
- The number of direct farm to customer markets
- The number of cultural celebrations
- Bundle measuring, for example for rural communities - if there is a meeting space, a food market etc. Some things that when they exist together make a difference bigger than just each one thing.
- How we die. How we care for those at the end of their lives. How we are cared for at the end of our life.

One question asked was whether it would be possible to create a (longer) list of all indicators (quantifiable and beyond quantifiable) compiled and accessible in one place to aid and inspire people/projects/groups in the development of their own indicators? (This would including ones from the various Doughnut Portrait reports, but also others not-yet published anywhere. It could be a crowd-sourced list, and ever growing.)

The question was from someone working with people from grassroots projects, often in quite remote communities and usually with little or no experience of developing indicators. So having a list of 'examples' from other projects would be super helpful for them as they develop their own, and I imagine it could really help others too.

DEAL is currently developing a data portrait hub which might meet some of these needs, but whether this will include not-yet-published and the beyond quantifiable indicators is TBC.

UPDATE: here's a place we call all contribute to a growing list of indicators!

1) click this link and add your indicator description
2) see it pop up in the visual below!

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The centrality of nature connection

When considering the topic 'community indicators of living well', there were a number of people in the sessions who shared the importance of nature connection in this.

For example, when looking at development work, 'cultural and spiritual connections to nature and wildlife' can be overlooked. The question was asked 'how instead might we start here, as a foundation to the work?'

You can read more about this from the One Nature Institute here, and a book they recommend on the topic here.

We also discussed how living well is dependent upon the living world. Which raises the question: how do we make this foundational insight alive in the work of surfacing community indicators of living well? And someone shared, if we are doing this in a holistic way, place-by-place we all contribute to the goal of the Doughnut - to meet the needs of all within the means of the living planet.

What about online communities?

Some people on the calls were interested in the indicators of a healthy online community and how we can measure that.

A reflection from the DE grassroots organising is that there are two levels: the local and the global. The local is in-person, in-place, connected by a geographic identity of a neighbourhood, town, city or region. The global is online, where organisers from each of these places connect to form a community where the Doughnut acts as the attractor and connector.

There is plenty to explore on this topic, and it raises the question, what do we mean by community, and what types of communities might need different types of indicators?

Tools and resources shared

Doughnut Portraits - a conceptual framing from DEAL and a collection of tools to help people make Doughnut Portraits of their place. https://doughnuteconomics.org/topics/doughnut-portrait
Cornerstone Indicators - a framework for evaluating holistic, non-linear outcomes. It is used to co-create contextual indicators of systemic health. https://cornerstoneindicators.com/
If you’re interested in Cornerstone Indicators then join this free co-learning process in September to November where people will be going through the Cornerstone Indicators Toolkit collectively: https://cornerstoneindicators.com/communityofpractice
CIVIC SQUARE’s Data Portrait of Place - https://civicsquare.notion.site/Data-Portrait-of-Place-69f8f46edfa04e74b266fd2ca103383b
WeGenerate Social Innovation Cookbook - a series of recipes (good practices) to achieve the revitalisation of neighbourhoods with communities Let’s get cooking!
California Doughnut Snapshot
https://caldec.org/ca-dougnut-snapshot/

Book with many examples of the in betweens of “reality” and indicators: Democracy's Hidden Heroes Fitting Policy to People and Place, by David Campbell https://www.whsmith.co.uk/Product/David-C-Campbell/Democracys-Hidden-Heroes--Fitting-Policy-to-People-and-Place/12023288

Acknowledgements

This story was written by Rob Shorter, Communities & Art Lead at DEAL (acknowledging the sense-making from my limited perspective).

Thanks to all those who came to the two peer-to-peer sessions (around 40 people in total) who shared their reflections, insights, experiences, questions and resources.

Find more community-focused events, tools and stories here.