I'm Kim Foale, a technologist, sound artist, and community organiser based in Manchester. I co-founded Geeks for Social Change (GFSC), a research studio that works with communities to create technology that addresses real needs rather than imposing solutions from above.
My work sits at the intersection of technology and social justice. I believe that disadvantaged communities and their people are not the problem—they are the solution. Technology should support and amplify community power, not replace it or extract value from it.
Through GFSC, I've developed an approach called Community Technology Partnerships—bringing together local tech expertise with community organisers to co-create digital solutions that address community-identified problems. This stands in contrast to the typical tech industry model of imposing tools on communities without understanding their actual needs.
PlaceCal emerged from work with Manchester Age Friendly Neighbourhoods, addressing a simple problem: older people couldn't find out what was happening in their area. We built an award-winning community calendar system that aggregates events from local organisations, combating loneliness and isolation by making hyperlocal information accessible again. The project won the AAL Smart Ageing Prize in 2018.
The Trans Dimension, developed with Gendered Intelligence and funded by Comic Relief, connects trans communities across the UK by bringing together news, events, and services in one accessible place. We've also produced The Trans Dimension Guide to Inclusive Events, a zine developed with the Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People.
imok is a safety bot supporting asylum seekers who are forced to 'sign on' at hostile immigration reporting centres. Created with No Borders Manchester, it provides a simple check-in system so people's support networks know if something goes wrong.
I've also worked with Gendered Intelligence on their website and rebrand, helped Trans Safety Network establish their visual identity for high-quality investigative journalism, assisted The White Pube in migrating from Wix to a properly structured accessible site, and collaborated with The Wildlife Trusts on Nextdoor Nature.
With Resistance Lab, I helped produce A Growing Threat to Life, documenting the dangers of Taser usage by Greater Manchester Police. This work combined data analysis with community knowledge to highlight the racialised nature of police violence and the specific risks Tasers pose.
I've researched Manchester's history of nuclear-free activism, investigated what happened to the city's once-strong anti-nuclear stance, and explored local history through projects like The Towers, documenting the stories of two tower blocks in Oldham and the people who lived and worked there.
I hold a PhD from the University of Salford, where my research examined soundscape through a listener-centred lens. Rather than focusing on acoustic environments, I explored how factors like activity, expectation, control, and comfort shape how people actually experience sound in urban spaces. The research used Grounded Theory to critique approaches that prioritise environments over individual perceptions.
This interest in perception and listening has continued through sound art projects like Elephants in the Dark, an experiment exploring how our eyes can fool our ears. The piece plays back audio and video recordings of seven locations in random combinations—a kettle, a motorway, a weir, a beach, radio static, hoovering, a computer lab—inviting viewers to notice how visual context shapes what we hear.
I write about technology ethics, community organising, surveillance, and the ways tech culture fails the communities it claims to serve. I'm interested in how data collection functions as surveillance, how "co-design" often fails to transfer real power to communities, and how we might build technology that genuinely serves people rather than extracting value from them.
GFSC has produced various publications and zines, and I host the GFSC podcast, exploring these themes through conversations with activists, researchers, and community organisers.
I also write about board games, local history, and whatever else catches my attention. This site is an archive of that writing alongside the various projects I've worked on over the years.
Before GFSC, I worked as a freelance web developer, building sites for organisations including co-ops, charities, and small businesses. I've worked with Drupal, Ruby on Rails, and various other technologies, though these days I'm more interested in the social than the technical side of technology work.
You can reach me at [email protected]. I'm also on Mastodon.