Sonhários: Wearable visions of regenerative worlds

[PT] A versão em português está disponível no Relatório dos Dias Donut Global 2025 do Donut Brasil. Você pode baixar o PDF no fim da página, em Attachments.

Sonhários as wearable tools for imagination

Sonhários are wearable fabrics created as tools for collective imagination. In the activity, developed by Karine Freire, they took the form of textiles of different sizes onto which children transferred their dreams of regenerative futures. By wearing and moving with the sonhários, participants embodied the worlds they imagined, turning abstract ideas about social and planetary limits into shared, lived experiences.

The territory and the school

The event held in Florianópolis, Brazil, took place at Efaz School, an institution whose pedagogical approach is grounded in environmental education and which, since 2005, has held the Sala Verde (Green Room) accreditation granted by the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment. The activity was part of the school’s Zero Waste Week and integrated the programme of the Global Donut Days in Brazil.

The experience: body, imagination and planetary boundaries

The Sonhários - Wearable visions of regenerative worlds activity lasted approximately 100 minutes and was designed to help children understand, in a sensitive and experiential way, the planetary boundaries and social foundations proposed by Doughnut Economics. Through body practices inspired by yoga, the children were invited to move within the safe and just space for humanity and the planet.  They were encouraged to “feel-think” (sentipensar) based on their own human experiences, as well as on the lived experience of other beings in nature - snakes, butterflies, grasshoppers, birds, trees and mountains. 

Dreaming, wearing and sharing possible futures

After the body practice, the children drew their dreams on a large paper Donut. They then took part in a moment of relaxation, focusing their attention on these dreams, listening to the sound of their own heartbeat and what it had to say.

Next, the children were invited to transfer their dreams onto the fabrics, wear the sonhários and move through the space with them, making the imagined futures something alive and shared.

Closing and sharing

The experience concluded with a sharing circle, in which the children talked about what they enjoyed most in the activity and the main learnings from the encounter.

The activity involved 36 children aged 10 in the morning and 30 children aged 8 in the afternoon, as well as the participation of four teachers and two pedagogical coordinators.

The following day, during the Family Celebration organised by the school, the sonhários were displayed to the community in an open space, allowing the dreams to be symbolically spread by the wind - like the prayers found in Eastern traditions.

“Experiencing the Donut with children, imagining regenerative worlds with body, mind and spirit connected, was a transformative experience. We dreamed of worlds in which all beings belong and can live well.”
Karine Freire