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Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL) have crafted a range of tools that anyone can utilise in order to explore what these ideas mean for the places they live. Expanding from what it means to unroll the doughnut explore in ‣ and 04 | Can Our Neighbourhood Get In The Doughnut?. DEAL have created the Doughnut Unrolled tool, a concept that takes us from the Doughnut to four 'lenses' and invites us to look at the interplay between local aspirations and global responsibilities in our place – both socially and ecologically – and identify possible entry points for transformative action.
The four lenses methodology allows us to understand the various aspects that influence and impact our lives and our environments in a way that gives space for the wide breadth that each dimension explores, whilst also allowing us to recognise how interconnected and interdependent the lenses, and all that they contain, are.
Though the lenses are separate, their boundaries are porous, and so the concepts remain fluid and mobile. This is an especially useful framing for exploring how various dimensions identified by DEAL materialise in a real place, as well as exploring how a specific place interacts with the wider global communities and ecosystems it is also a part of.
The first Neighbourhood Doughnut Data Portrait of Place was led by Kavita Purohit in collaboration with a group of researcher who also worked on the Leeds Doughnut portrait - Catriona Rawsthorne, Irena Bauman and Jenni Brookes - and was supported by Andrew Fanning at DEAL, as well as all the generosity and precedence from work across the world.
Our Neighbourhood Doughnut Data Portrait of Place has been created with the neighbourhood of Ladywood, Birmingham UK in focus. It is the first doughnut portrait to be shared that interacts with this neighbourhood scale. In practice, as part of this process, it was decided that the data for the local lenses would be based on the neighbourhood scale, while the global lenses connects to the city scale for Birmingham. There were a number of reasons for this decision, including:
Through the Data Portrait of Place approach it is possible to explore how our neighbourhood is achieving ambitions and responsibilities, and serves as a “snapshot” of where the neighbourhood is currently positioned with the Doughnut Economics framework. Upon understanding the status of our current reality across multiple interconnected dimensions, this study can be utilised as a framework and compass for where investment, infrastructure and mobilisation may be necessary in order to transition into the socially just and ecologically safe space, as well as an opportunity to celebrate what is thriving in balance and where shifts in the right direction have been achieved together over the years to come.
Much of the methodology that has been used to create the Data Portrait of Place has come from developments and learnings from the immense Doughnut Economics community across the globe held through the Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL). The notable efforts of those at the Cornwall Doughnut, Amsterdam Doughnut, Devon Doughnut, Curaçao Doughnut, Brussels Doughnut, Melbourne Doughnut, Leeds Doughnut and many more, with whom each iteration has grown the capacity of this work and incorporated more coherence, creating space for further iteration and sensemaking. As some of the researchers involved in this exercise had previously worked on the Leeds City Doughnut, there has been some continuation in methodology, with some variations and learnings incorporated in this Neighbourhood Doughnut iteration. We give our particular thanks to Catriona Rawsthorne, Irena Bauman and Jenni Brooks for their extensive work.
Although each lens has a different enquiry question and varied dimensions it explores, each lens explores a few things consistently, though the structure of the lenses are not limited to these.
These are: