2022-2023 Competition Winners
2022-2023 Competition Winners
From the Third Coast International Audio Festival, these are the eleven best stories of 2021. In Our 21st year of the Third Coast/Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition, with over 600 submissions from around the world, these are the stories that our judges couldn't keep out of their ears and minds, the ones that pushed the boundaries of what audio is capable of & reconstructed our world in sound.
Read on for what our exceptional crew of judges had to say about each award-winning work, and click through to hear the pieces, and learn about them from the makers themselves.
BEST DOCUMENTARY: GOLD
I Remember His Look. The Story of a Soldier and a Migrant.
FROM LRT RADIJAS ⟼
In the summer of 2021, dozens, and later hundreds, of people started illegally crossing the Lithuanian border from Belarus every day. As a result, Lithuania reinforced its border protection, building a metal fence and a barbed-wire barrier and assigning troops to help the border guards. Lithuania and the European Union say that this is a “hybrid attack” orchestrated by the Minsk regime, which has taken advantage of the desire of thousands of people – mainly Iraqi Kurds but also Syrians, Congolese, Afghans, and others – to reach Western Europe and have a safer and better life there. This is the story about two people – one guarding the border, the other crossing it illegally – and the circumstances that have led to the intersection of their lives.
BEST DOCUMENTARY: SILVER
Finn & The Bell
FROM RUMBLE STRIP ⟼
On one level, “Finn and the Bell” is a portrait of an extraordinary kid who decided, one night, to take his own life; but more importantly, the show is a portrait of how a whole community grieves. Finn was a young man who cared deeply about his town, though the town, Hardwick, Vermont, might seem unremarkable. He found meaning in that place and tried to bring its disparate elements together – in particular, through the return of a stolen bell once used to celebrate the town’s victories. Over the eight months that I conducted interviews for this story, I watched as the people of Hardwick, by trying to understand Finn’s life and death, came to understand their own town and its importance. They taught me to understand it too. The show has met with a powerful response: hundreds of comments, some from people who know Finn’s story well, most from people all over the world who never met him.
BEST DOCUMENTARY: BRONZE
FREEDOM DIVING
FROM INVISIBILIA (NPR) ⟼
Somewhere in the pandemic and the terrible news cycle, co-host Kia Miakka Natisse got stuck in a butt divet in her couch and an even deeper funk. To break out, she sets out on a journey to the bottom of the ocean, looking for an answer to a single, existential question: can I be safe and free? On her hunt for wisdom, she journeys to Cape Town, South Africa, to dive into the ocean with freediver and self-proclaimed mermaid, Zandile Ndhlovu.
IMPACT
Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong
FROM AMERICAN PUBLIC MEDIA ⟼
There's an idea about how children learn to read that's held sway in schools for more than a generation — even though it was proven wrong by cognitive scientists decades ago. Teaching methods based on this idea can make it harder for children to learn how to read. In this six-part podcast, host Emily Hanford investigates the influential authors who promote this idea and the company that sells their work. It's an exposé of how educators came to believe in something that isn't true and are now reckoning with the consequences — children harmed, money wasted, an education system upended.
BEST NEWS FEATURE
It started in the fourth grade building
FROM POST REPORTS (THE WASHINGTON POST) ⟼
Within hours of the deadliest school shooting in nearly a decade, reporter Arelis Hernández got in her car and drove to Uvalde, TX from her home in San Antonio. One of the first people she met there was 9-year-old Jalissa Ibarra. Jalissa told Arelis what happened at her school in a rapid speech that began with the phrase, "It started in the fourth-grade building" — and her small, childlike voice stuck with us. Post Reports produced an episode the next day recounting what happened at Uvalde through the eyes of this young girl. Arelis brought her full humanity to the reporting, breaking down as she spoke to us from her car in Uvalde near the site of the shooting. In one of the most heartbreaking moments of the interview, she asked Jalissa: "Did you ever imagine that anything like this would happen at your school?" and Jalissa responded right away:"Yes. That's why I'm scared to go in the restrooms, because I'm scared that someone's going to pop up. So I don't like to go to the restrooms at my school. I stay in my classroom."
BEST DOCUMENTARY: SHORT
Checking One's Levels
FROM SHORT CUTS (FALLING TREE PRODUCTIONS, BBC RADIO 4) ⟼
Checking One's Levels is a quiet piece about memory and loss and porridge. It features recordings made over several months by Talia, a part-time carer and aspiring audio producer who is looking after a woman with Alzheimer’s and Dementia. Talia and the woman were conducting recordings for a separate project, but each day as Talia set up the microphone, she asked the woman what she had for breakfast to check the levels. For audio producers, it’s a throwaway question; the answer doesn’t matter. But for the woman, the question held a deeper resonance.
BEST NEW ARTIST
Life Partners
FROM SHORT CUTS (FALLING TREE PRODUCTIONS, BBC RADIO 4) ⟼
What happens when we reframe the relationship to our body as a life partnership? Life Partners brings this question to life, as Hania Fares recounts the highs and lows of her 33-year relationship to 'Bea'. Developed over a series of facilitated workshops and interviews, producer Christina Hardinge adapts the drama-therapy technique of ‘characterisation’ to collaboratively create this unscripted story with Hania; revealing entirely new perspectives on a remarkably common experience. Talia and the woman were conducting recordings for a separate project, but each day as Talia set up the microphone, she asked the woman what she had for breakfast to check the levels. For audio producers, it’s a throwaway question; the answer doesn’t matter. But for the woman, the question held a deeper resonance.
AUDIO UNBOUND
Promise Burden Prompt Origin Defense Palette Call
INDEPENDENT
A meandering poem-performance-essay-record where I try to work through a few mental knots with myself. I let some of my self-directed thinking bleed out from my desktop, but I also touch on interpersonal themes and create ingresses into understanding, at times, and for people that I want to invite in.
BEST SERIALIZED STORY
You Didn't See Nothin
INVISIBLE INSTITUTE & USG AUDIO
Twenty-five years ago in Chicago, a little boy named Lenard Clark was beaten into a coma just for being Black. Almost overnight, the news stories turned to racial reconciliation and forgiveness. Writer Yohance Lacour didn’t buy that shit. You Didn't See Nothin is the result of his years-long inquiry into how that narrative took hold, and how it changed his life.
DIRECTORS' CHOICE
HIS SATURN RETURN
THE 11TH PODCAST (PINEAPPLE STREET STUDIOS)
We travel through time and space to meet Duran Durag on the brink of his Saturn Return. He’s cocky and charming, smooth and clumsy. If it weren’t for his fancy durag and his family name, Duran wouldn’t be given the time of day. And it’s high time for him to learn some important life lessons. The all-knowing DJ Saturn is not playing when he sends this young space alien on a series of challenges that reveal what it is to live in a universe that doesn’t orbit around ego. Will the missions he’s sent on ground him, or will his swagger get in the way of growing up? You Didn't See Nothin is the result of his years-long inquiry into how that narrative took hold, and how it changed his life.
