Sean Farmelo

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.