Sean Farmelo

This note was created for the Commoning Beyond Growth Workshop, which took place in Nottingham from June 5 to 7, 2024.

Biography

Sean uses participatory research to look at strategy formation at the intersection of social movements and mutualist co-operative organisations. Sean has been an actively engaged in the co-operative movement in the city for 10 years. He is a worker owner at Birmingham Bike Foundry and co-founder of The Warehouse Cafe workers co-operative. He started Birmingham Student Housing Co-operative, the first of its kind in the U.K. He is also part of Stirchley Co-operative Development, a project building affordable flats and retails units. During the pandemic he has been a core participant of Co-operation Birmingham, a mutual aid project delivering over 15k hot meals to people isolating.

Using participatory engagement he is investigating the process of commoning and how it can be employed by solidarity economy networks as way of generating community power and ecological justice. He employs a framework of heterodox economics, examining the roles of social reproduction and ecological stewardship in rephrasing the approaches to sustainable value creation. (source)

[Traduction libre]

Sean Farmelo utilise la recherche participative pour étudier la formation de stratégies à l'intersection des mouvements sociaux et des organisations coopératives mutualistes. Actif dans le mouvement coopératif depuis 10 ans, il est propriétaire-travailleur à Birmingham Bike Foundry et co-fondateur de The Warehouse Cafe workers co-operative. Il a lancé la Birmingham Student Housing Co-operative, première en son genre au Royaume-Uni, et participe à Stirchley Co-operative Development. Pendant la pandémie, il a été un membre clé de Co-operation Birmingham, un projet d'entraide ayant livré plus de 15 000 repas chauds aux personnes isolées.

En utilisant l'engagement participatif, il examine le processus de communalisation et comment il peut être employé par les réseaux d'économie solidaire pour générer du pouvoir communautaire et de la justice écologique. Il utilise un cadre d'économie hétérodoxe, examinant les rôles de la reproduction sociale et de la gestion écologique pour reformuler les approches de la création de valeur durable.