What is a Doughnut Portrait?

What is a Doughnut Portrait? A Doughnut Portrait is looking through four lenses, at our place and community, and making visible what we find, in a wide diversity of ways, so that we can take action towards the future we want. A future with everyone living well within planetary boundaries.

Introduction and overview

Hello and welcome to the tool What is a Doughnut Portrait? A tool to give you the confidence to start a process of organising and making a Doughnut Portrait for your place, whether that be your street, civic space, neighbourhood, city, bioregion, or nation.

The aims of the tool are:

1. To help you introduce the idea of a Doughnut Portrait to your community.
2. To show you the breadth and depth of Doughnut Portrait possibilities.
3. To help you start planning for your own Doughnut Portrait, including: why you want to create it, how you can create it, how you might share it, and how you bring care into the process.

The tool has been created in collaboration with a global grassroots community, and can be used by anyone, in any setting, e.g. by a school or by a local government.

The tool is currently in English only, but it is being translated into Brazilian Portuguese, Korean and Spanish. If you would like to inquire about the translation process to get the tool translated into your language, please contact rob@doughnuteconmics.org.

What's in this tool

The main tool contains different elements that you can choose from and use as you wish. We welcome you to adapt the slides to suit your design and plan.

Below you'll see a picture of all the elements in the main tool. The elements in grey are there to support you in your planning process and the elements in colour are activities you can do.

To get started, we recommend that you read through all of the elements individually or collectively, before starting to plan and organise.

• Here is the set of slides covering all elements of the main tool that you can read and use to plan how to create your own Doughnut Portrait.

And as part of the main tool:

• Here's an introductory video answering the question 'What is a Doughnut Portrait?'

• Here is collection of over 25 case studies of Doughnut Portraits.
• Here are some workshop canvases that you can use.
• Here is the Doughnut Portrait Tool Library (in Miro) and here is a folder with images of each section (or shelf) of the library (in Google Drive) containing lots of tools that are useful in creating your own Doughnut Portrait.
• Here are the Doughnut Portrait Makers: Global Connections sessions starting in February 2026, and running monthly thereafter.

An introductory video

A Doughnut Portrait is looking through these four lenses, at our place and community, and making visible what we find, in a wide diversity of ways, so that we can take action towards the future we want. A future with everyone living well within planetary boundaries.

This 16-minute video introduces the idea and some examples of Doughnut Portraits so that you don’t have to worry about presenting it yourself. You can then show your chosen case studies that are most relevant and inspiring for your community.

If you wish to present this to your community yourself, the slides are available in the main tool with the script - both of which you can adapt.

Case studies

Here is collection of over 25 case studies of Doughnut Portraits that you can read, then choose the most relevant and inspiring to share with your community.

The case studies include portraits that have been made at different scales and created by a mixture of communities, universities, local governments and other organisations.

If you would like to see your Doughnut Portrait here, please share a story of your work on the DEAL Platform and contact us to let us know!

Workshop canvases

Here are some workshop canvases that you can use to plan your Doughnut Portrait that go along with the elements in the main tool. Feel free to make a copy of this document (File > Make a copy) and make your own adaptations.

Doughnut Portrait Tool Library

Here is the Doughnut Portrait Tool Library (in Miro) and here is a folder with images of each section (or shelf) of the library (in Google Drive). 

We welcome you to add tools you’ve made and tools you’ve used made by others. There is a guide of how to do this on the first section of the library.

Global Connections

Take your global connections to the next level by joining one of our Doughnut Portrait Makers: Global Connections sessions starting in February 2026, and running monthly thereafter, where you can learn from others, share your work, and build relationships, from place to place.

Launch event

Hear from three community organisers (in Korea, UK and Canada), creating Doughnut Portraits at three different scales, in the launch event of the tool on 17th October 2025, plus some background about how the tool came into being.

Acknowledgements

This tool represents years of collective effort. You can see the full list of acknowledgements at the end of the main tool, and at the end of the case studies.