An accessible and engaging way to introduce the Doughnut to any group
Top left: Bristol Green Capital Partnership workshop. Top right: Irish Doughnut Economics Network Movement Lab, Dublin. Bottom Left: African Visual Artists Associates (AVIAS) engagement at Rwamwanja settlement camp, Uganda. Bottom right: Milton Keynes Doughnut Economics Group workshop at Global Donut Day 2023.
Quotes
"Despite having worked with, applied and presented the concept for several years, this was the first time I had ever connected with the concept on an emotional level. It was a game-changer."
Tim Frenneaux, Consultant, during the launch of the Leeds Doughnut.
“I had been very confused about the model and how it worked. However slowly building it using the ropes and reflecting on the local questions really helped bring Doughnut to life for me.”
Participant reflecting after a workshop run by Milton Keynes Doughnut Economics Group.
"The best part of the way the workshop is designed is that it is open to interpretations and is easily adaptable to work in different contexts. I adapted it to use it in a classroom setting, with post-graduate ‘Design and Innovation’ students. The workshop allowed everyone to engage at different levels with the social dimensions and the planetary boundaries, and question their positionality, their privileges, and also their disadvantages. These students were a mixed group from the global North and South, and it allowed them to compare their views and opinions as individuals but also as representatives of intersectional groups. The workshop had something for everyone, each person engaged with it differently yet they were unified in thinking about the need for systemic change and their role as designers in this realm.”
Vinishree Solanki, co-organiser of Doughnut Economics Scotland Network.
Overview of the workshop
The aim of this workshop is to introduce the Doughnut to people in an experiential and accessible way. It enables people to literally step into the Doughnut to experience the idea rather than just think about it. There are prompts that invite people to reflect on the things they care about in their lives, in their community and in the world. The workshop helps people to see many connections and how these can all live within the goal of the Doughnut.
The workshop is a great way to set a foundation for a community engagement. You can run this workshop and then go in lots of different directions afterwards. See the last part of this guide for ideas (8. Where to take it next).
The workshop works best for groups from 15 to 50 and it takes between 45 to 60 minutes, depending on how much time you want to give for each step.
Set up
You'll need a large open space to run the workshop and you’ll need materials for each boundary of the Doughnut.
There are two main methods to create each boundary. Both methods are effective.
Method 1 is to use two big ropes.
Method 2 is to use lots of thin (5cm) strips of fabric that participants tie together. This method has an added benefit that all participants co-creating the boundaries, which allows a moment to add an insight around who gets to define what these boundaries are. See step 7.4. Co-creating our own Doughnut
The following numbers are illustrative and flexible:
Method 2: Number of fabric pieces = 80. And length of fabric pieces = 55 cm.
Note that as the group size gets bigger the amount of space per person will decrease. This is because it can be hard to find a room to make a Doughnut big enough for 50 people!
Other useful things
It’s also useful to have large prints of the Doughnut - both the basic Doughnut diagram and the ‘overshoot’ Doughnut diagram, with the red bars. You can find these diagrams here.
Overview of the steps
There are 7 steps. Based on a 55 minute workshop, the steps and timings are:
Step 1 - Introductions - 10 minutes
Step 2 - The outer boundary - 5 minutes
Step 3 - The inner boundary - 5 minutes
Step 4 - Moving around the space - 5 minutes
Step 5 - Connecting in pairs - 15 minutes
Step 6 - Group reflections - 10 minutes
Step 7 - Wrap up - 5 minutes
Each step has substeps within it, a script you can use, some facilitator guidance and some example pictures (see Facilitator Guides). Feel free to make your own copy of any of the facilitator guides so that you can add your own notes and script. You can also take words out that don’t serve your facilitation process. We'd also love you to share any pictures of your workshop that you and your participants are happy to be shared. You can add them to the DEAL Photo Stream and add the hashtag
A note on training new facilitators, if you are facilitating the workshop for the first time we recommend that you facilitate it in a group of two or three people. You can then divide up the script into smaller, more manageable pieces.
The final step of this facilitator guide - Step 8. - is a selection of possibilities for where to take it next.
Whilst the workshop has evolved a lot, here's a video of Rob (DEAL's Communities & Art Lead) doing version 1.0 of the workshop at the launch of the Leeds Doughnut in April 2022. If you have any questions about the workshop, please contact Rob directly at rob@doughnuteconomics.org.
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The English version of the facilitator guide has been put into plain English and translated using DeepL. Any guides that have had a speaker of that language go through and make corrections are called 'validiated'. Otherwise the guides are referred to as 'unvalidated', which means that they are likely to contain translation errors. If you would like to make corrections in order to validate your language's guide, please share your validated guide with Rob at rob@doughnuteconomics.org.
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In Step Into The Doughnut we verbally introduce the dimensions of the Doughnut. To take this further, you can do the activity called ‘Sparking Connections’. In this activity everyone is given a dimension of the Doughnut card with pictures and a short description. People then move around the room making connections between their dimensions in pairs. The activity helps reveal how connected everything is. People feel a sense of possibility when they realise just how many connections there are that they wouldn’t have expected. And the activity is also fun and energising.
Introducing regenerative and distributive design
Regenerative and distributive design are the two main design dynamics that Doughnut Economics offers to get humanity into the Doughnut. These can be hard to explain. So we've prepared three short videos that introduce these concepts for you. They each last about 3 minutes. You can play the videos first, then hold a conversation about examples that people know about.
Exploring our roles
After participating in Step Into The Doughnut some people might want to explore how they can take action. To do this, you might like to facilitate a group activity where people discuss and share where their interest lies. And they can share their areas of interest where they have energy to take action. There is also an activity called ‘Set the Stage’ that introduces participants to the many roles within the economy. ‘Set the Stage’ could be run before holding a group discussion about roles.
Introducing the local perspective
The Doughnut is a global goal for humanity. So how do we introduce a local perspective to this global goal? To do this we have created The Four Lenses of Doughnut Unrolled. To introduce this you can share this introductory video and explore these tools.
Acknowledgements
This workshop was originally developed by Rob Shorter and Kate Raworth in 2021. Version 2.0 (October 2024) has been developed by Rob Shorter based on this insights and learnings shared by many members of the DEAL Community and on first-hand experience of iterative experimentation.
This is such a brilliant workshop to get to the heart of the matter, it opens conversations with people in a way that brings depth, authenticity and sets a tone for collaboration.
Facilitating this workshop over the last year I've discovered that when you form the outer boundary & people are still holding the rope circle - play with the tension, pull on the rope to show how if one part of the system pulls the circle it can be felt all across the circle. The connection to the system via the rope circle resonates with people.
Egil Petter Stræte
Oslo, Norway
I hope to be inspired how to assess various dimensions of sustainability in a holistic perspective. To learn new methods.