We believe that helping young people to think about thriving in balance with the living planet is crucial if we are to transform our economic system to one that works for everyone. And this isn’t just about engaging with students who are learning about economics - we want to reach all students in schools and in further education whatever their study focus.
We have found that introductory Step into the Doughnut workshops are a great place to start for young people who want to pull together the huge range of social and environmental issues and initiatives they are hearing about; whether circular economies, recycling, climate change, inequality, poverty, biodiversity or others.
This can often be overwhelming: how can young people bring all of these issues under one understandable umbrella? Doughnut economics allows them to do that and by engaging with broad ideas in playful and accessible ways and we find that most young people very quickly understand issues and see the connections and challenges.
This workstream has opened with a focus on London’s universities, beginning in 2025 with several workshops at Kingston University during London’s Climate Action Week. Kingston liked the way the introductory workshops captured students’ imagination as well as emotionally and they asked us to create a bespoke workshop for their Sustainability of Professional Practices undergraduate module. This is an elective module for a range of their degree courses and the workshop was delivered over two days in March 2026 with strong engagement from the students, generating ideas and proposals for the university to take away and consider in their own sustainability planning.
We have also run workshops at the 2026 London Students Sustainability conference and the UCL Sustainability Leadership conference. Other workshops have included SOAS’s Rethinking Economics group and we are speaking to other London Universities about how we can bring Doughnut type thinking to their students.
At secondary education level we also delivered a workshop in 2025 for Haringey Sixth Form College as part of a Kingston University led European Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) project - empowering young people from underrepresented communities in environmental science.
Our aim is to engage with as many of London’s universities as we can as well as extending our reach to other secondary schools and colleges. We would love to have introductions and suggestions from parents, teachers and students who believe their school or college would be interested in hosting an introductory workshop, so please do contact us if you‘d like to explore the Doughnut with your learning cohort!
