Third Coast International Audio Festival

Ahhh, we did it! YOU did it!

When we launched the campaign in May, we weren't sure what the response was going to be. The campaign was our public call to raise money for one of our longest-running programs — the Third Coast Competition — in the wake of an abrupt decision by our longtime funder to no longer support the program.

But this launch also signaled the beginning of a very important year for Third Coast — a year in which we are fundraising to build widespread investment in Third Coast to keep our programming relevant, independent, and accessible to our community. We believe that Third Coast's work is fundamental to this industry, and we want to be able to do more of it.

This week, we exceeded our goal for the public campaign: We raised $52,635 from you, our community. We are so excited to use this momentum to build the newly independent Third Coast Competition and launch it this fall. We are so excited to continue to offer more Audio Doctor appointments. And we are so excited to continue to fundraise — a little more behind the scenes now — to build a stronger Third Coast so that we can better give back to you, our community.

But for now? We want to celebrate, and thank you all for reaching this tremendous milestone.

This is officially your *last* reminder from us to donate to the Campaign before our 11:59 PM CT fundraising deadline tonight! We hit our $50K goal earlier today, but every, single dollar adds up — and we know there are a lot of you out there who are great with hitting a deadline! Link in bio to donate.

Illustration by .studio / Design by

We’re winding down the Campaign, with less than 6 hours before our fundraising deadline at 11:59 PM CT tonight. While we hit our $50K goal earlier today (!), every dollar adds up. So if you’ve been meaning to donate, you’ve got a few hours left! Consider this one of your last reminders!

Link in bio to donate.

Illustration by .studio / Design by

Wow! Overnight we reached our $50,000 campaign goal! We have just under 12 hours left before our fundraising deadline at 11:59 PM CT tonight, and we want to see how much we can raise for Third Coast before this phase of our fundraising campaign ends.

Every dollar we raise goes towards building the kind of inspiring, accessible field-building programming that we are known for — and creating new pathways for audio makers to discover. Link in bio to donate before our deadline.

Just 36 hours left in the campaign & ONLY $1,275 left to raise! The end is IN SIGHT.

If you’ve been waiting to donate, now’s the time — the campaign officially ends at midnight CT tomorrow, July 31! Donation link in bio.

Illustration by .studio / Design by

We’re in the FINAL stretch!

With just 4 days before the end of the campaign, we have only $2,595 left to raise. And last night, we hit a pretty incredible milestone: We received a donation from our 200th campaign donor (and then our 201st and 202nd)! Seeing the donations (of any amount) add up like this from our community reminds us of just how impactful Third Coast’s work is.

Can you help us get to $50K by July 31?

Illustration by .studio / Design by

Wow — thanks to all of you, we raised more than $500 overnight! With five days left before the July 31 deadline, we now have just $3,350 left to raise!

Over the past few months, you’ve been hearing from us about the We Need Third Coast Campaign: a campaign to raise $50,000 to re-launch the Third Coast Competition as an independent program and to grow critically needed programs for all makers, like the Audio Doctor Program.

Can you donate today to help us raise $3,350 to re-launch the Third Coast Competition and continue building programming that serves our audio community right now?

Illustration by .studio / Design by

We’re so excited to announce that thanks to a generous one-for-one match of all donations up to $10K from This American Life, Third Coast has now raised over $45,000 toward our $50,000 goal. We are so, so close to meeting our goal, and we need your help to push us over the edge! bit.ly/WeNeedThirdCoast

Today, we have just under $5,000 remaining until we meet our goal toward re-launching the Third Coast Competition as an independent program that serves all entrants, disrupts hierarchies in the industry, and celebrates the best audio work in the world. We need your support now to keep propelling the audio industry forward! bit.ly/WeNeedThirdCoast

We’re so excited to share big news from the Campaign: for all new donations in July up to $10K, This American Life has just offered to match every single gift, dollar for dollar: bit.ly/WeNeedThirdCoast

This means every time you donate to relaunch the independent Third Coast Competition, your impact will be DOUBLED: donate $50 & it becomes $100; donate $500 & it turns into $1,000 toward creating more field building opportunities in audio through the year-round Third Coast Competition.

A sincere thank you to This American Life for recognizing the value of audio community and experimentation, and for leading the way with this matching challenge. We all need each other to survive, and to thrive. If your institution can also make a gift to , please reach out: [email protected]

Double your donation to Third Coast now: bit.ly/WeNeedThirdCoast

Thanks to Andrea Miralles Art for the beautiful campaign illustration and Clara May for her creative and striking designs.

We think Third Coast International Audio Festival is an important part of fostering audio community and experimentation. That's why we're matching donations up to $10,000 for their campaign.

Donate now to double your impact: https://bit.ly/3W99YCH

Today's Maker Spotlight is on Jordan Gass-Poore' & the team from Queens Memory, who won the 2021 Impact Award for their piece "Intersection." Check out the newsletter to read Jordan's full testimonial! You can also listen to their award-winning work here: https://bit.ly/QueensIntersection

Jordan really captures our vision behind the independent Third Coast Competition, created to fuel art and community. If you have not already, please donate to today: https://bit.ly/WeNeedThirdCoast

We haven't been giving enough credit to the talented artists who helped bring to life. We want to express our appreciation for their work, which you can find throughout our campaign materials... Thank you!

Please check these creators out. Art by Andrea Miralles (https://www.andreamiralles.com/ + on IG) & design by Clara May (https://claramay.info/ + on IG).

There's just $1,139 left to raise before we reach $25K (halfway to our goal!) toward re-launching the independent Third Coast Competition. Can you help us get there today? Every donation matters.

Donate now: bit.ly/WeNeedThirdCoast

We were able to make such incredible progress thanks to a $10,000 gift from an anonymous group of donors to the Campaign. When they approached us with the gift, they had a message for all of us: “Third Coast was the heartbeat of our industry — let's get it back.” We couldn't agree more, and we are deeply thankful for this support.

We couldn't agree more. Please make your own gift to Third Coast to help us reach this $25K milestone!

Art by Andrea Miralles Art / on IG / Design by Clara May (https://claramay.info/information)

This week's Maker Spotlight is on Jocelyn Robinson, a former Third Coast Listener & current Third Coast Board Member. Jocelyn does amazing work as an audio producer, radio preservationist and educator, and is based out of Yellow Springs, Ohio. Don’t miss her recent podcast “Rediscovered Radio: Women’s Voices, Women’s Music in the WYSO Archives,” exploring WYSO Public Radio’s early years and music of the past four decades through women’s voices.

At Third Coast, we believe in the power of deep listening, and how it can benefit makers’ creative process and vision. That’s one reason why we recruit audio producers for the Competition review and judging process — because we know the power that stepping out of your own storytelling and into others’ can have on your creative practice.

If you believe that listening has the power to transform audio makers' careers, please donate to the Campaign today: https://bit.ly/WeNeedThirdCoast

Art by Andrea Miralles Art / on IG / Design by Clara May (https://claramay.info/information)

We’re so excited to feature these words by Adomas Zubė, part of the team that won a 2022-23 Third Coast Best Documentary: Gold Award. Adomas, an audio producer from Lithuania (https://bit.ly/AdomasZubeBio), on how transformative winning a Third Coast Award can be, especially for those whose work is underrepresented in the industry. We hope you'll donate to the We Need Third Coast Campaign to continue making an impact on audio producers like Adomas: https://bit.ly/WeNeedThirdCoast

A correction: Last week we misattributed a Maker Spotlight on Vaida Pilibaitytė that we should have attributed to Adomas, her colleague. We’re back to make sure we properly spotlight Adomas and his thoughtful reflections about the impact Third Coast has had on his team, and his audio community.

We hope you get to know Adomas and make sure to check out “Atsimenu jo žvilgsnį. Istorija apie karį ir migrantą (I Remember His Look. The Story of a Soldier and a Migrant),” produced by Sigita Vegytė, edited by Vaida Pilibaitytė & Adomas Zubė, and the Winner of the Best Documentary: Gold Award: https://bit.ly/2023ThirdCoastGoldAwardWinner

And donate now to the We Need Third Coast Campaign: https://bit.ly/WeNeedThirdCoast

Art by Andrea Miralles Art / on IG / Design by Clara May (https://claramay.info/information)

Hey everyone:

Our Audio Doctor appointments are now FULL/at capacity. If you filled out the sign-up form, you'll hear from us shortly. We received a ton of interest in this program and we are SO EXCITED about the overwhelmingly positive response.

Please consider donating to the Campaign to support more programming like this in the future! https://bit.ly/WeNeedThirdCoast

Art by Andrea Miralles Art / on IG / Design by Clara May (https://claramay.info/information)

During the We Need Third Coast Campaign, we're asking for your support (https://bit.ly/WeNeedThirdCoast) but we also want to give back to our audio community. That’s why we're introducing free Audio Doctor appointments: one-on-one meetings with experienced makers offering feedback on an audio project, now available to anyone, at any stage of their career. Sign-ups are taking place through our newsletter: https://bit.ly/ThirdCoastNewsletter

A HUGE thank you to these three audio makers who have generously donated their time to the campaign as Audio Doctors: Jenny Asarnow (Podcast Producer & Consultant), Phyllis Fletcher (Senior Story Editor, Wondery), and Jenny Lawton (Showrunner, Editor & Producer).

We dream of doing programming like Audio Doctor Appointments on a much bigger scale, including as part of our future Third Coast Competitions, but we need your help to get there. Please help us reach our goal of raising $50,000 to re-launch an independent Third Coast Competition this summer: https://bit.ly/WeNeedThirdCoast

Art by Andrea Miralles Art / on IG / Design by Clara May (https://claramay.info/information)

We have another Maker Spotlight to share with you this week for the Campaign — this time, all the way from Lithuania! Like so many members of our community, the Third Coast Competition changed her life. Please donate now to help re-launch the Third Coast Competition as an independent program: https://bit.ly/WeNeedThirdCoast

For this week’s Maker Spotlight, we’re featuring Vaida Pilibaitytė, Lithuanian radio journalist, documentary producer, and the editor of “Atsimenu jo žvilgsnį. Istorija apie karį ir migrantą (I Remember His Look. The Story of a Soldier and a Migrant),” which received Third Coast's Best Documentary: Gold Award in the 2022-23 Competition.

Both the Third Coast staff and our Final Round Judges were blown away by this documentary from Lithuania, the first to ever win this award. And being crowned the Gold Award Winner had a huge impact on the small audio documentary community of Lithuania and speaks to the importance of a global audio ecosystem. As Vaida shared: “Third Coast raises the profile of emerging voices within the industry and fosters cross-cultural dialogue and understanding through narrative audio. International recognition creates more financial opportunities for fundraising for new productions.”

https://bit.ly/WeNeedThirdCoast

Art by Andrea Miralles Art / on IG / Design by Clara May (https://claramay.info/information)

Last week, we launched the We Need Third Coast Campaign: our effort to raise $50,000 to re-launch an independent Third Coast Competition & Call for Entries, and to begin a year of increasing financial investment in the organization: https://bit.ly/WeNeedThirdCoast

One of the reasons we need your support is that while our historic financial supporter of the Competition decided in late 2023 to cease their funding, the Third Coast Competition has been growing steadily over the years — and by all metrics we track, was more successful than ever. But just how much has the program grown?

The clearest way to see this growth is to look at the hours of total entries received: in the 2018 cycle, we received 381 hours of entries, whereas during the 2022-23 cycle, we received 1,048 hours of entries. That's a 175% increase!

More entries mean an even better Third Coast Competition: more work to listen to, more makers to honor, and more programming to uplift and connect audio communities around the world. And more entries also means this Third Coast program matters: Clearly, audio makers from around the world are looking for recognition. That's exactly why we need your support to re-launch an independent Third Coast Competition: so that we can properly resource our Listening Team to hear every single entry, continue to honor and curate more and more work, and give audio makers the chance to be recognized by these critically-needed, unique awards: https://bit.ly/WeNeedThirdCoast

Art by Andrea Miralles Art / on IG / Design by Clara May (https://claramay.info/information)

One of the things that makes Third Coast’s Competition & Call for Entries program stand out is that we listen to every single entry, then select a jury of audio makers from the industry as Final Round Judges who bring their own keen curatorial eyes & ears. Working with Final Round Judges is one of our favorite parts of the year, and we have dreams of expanding this program into a listening-based Residency in the future.

Help Third Coast to re-launch our Competition and expand our offerings by donating now: https://bit.ly/WeNeedThirdCoast

Someone we worked with during our last Competition Cycle was Sharon Mashihi, who alongside Justine Tobiasz and Stacia Brown, was a Final Round Judge for our two newest categories: Audio Unbound & Best Documentary: Short. Today, we’re featuring Sharon’s testimonial about why Third Coast’s Competition matters so much, and how it helps to elevate experimental risk-taking in the field.

Art by Andrea Miralles Art / on IG / Design by Clara May (https://claramay.info/information)

We’ve received an outpouring of support over the first few days of the Campaign — we already have 57 supporters! Thank you to every single person who has donated.

We need to keep this momentum going... our goal is to reach $5,000 this first week, or 10% of our overall goal. Little by little, and bit by bit. Help Third Coast re-launch the audio competition that is by makers, for makers!

Art by Andrea Miralles Art / on IG / Design by Clara May (https://claramay.info/information)

Let’s raise $50,000 to re-launch an independent Third Coast Competition in July Support the Third Coast Competition: by makers, for makers! It’s a challenging time in the audio industry, and a challenging time in our world. But global audio communities are still craving the things that nourish us most… Over the past few years, Third Coast has weathered a number of its own c...

Our first Maker Spotlight is out now, featuring Jackson Roach! Jackson shares, in their own words, why Third Coast matters to the audio industry, and why supporting a program like the Third Coast Competition is so vital: https://bit.ly/WeNeedThirdCoast

Jackson has worked with Third Coast on many aspects of the Competition since 2020. They have played a key support role, and witnessed much of the work we've done to build new opportunities, connections & commemorations for all Competition entrants, not just a select few.

You can read Jackson's full testimonial about the urgent & unique work of the Third Coast Competition in our latest newsletter: https://bit.ly/JacksonMakerSpotlight

To sign up for our newsletter, click here: https://bit.ly/ThirdCoastNewsletter

Art by Andrea Miralles Art / on IG / Design by Clara May (https://claramay.info/information)

Introducing the We Need Third Coast Campaign: our effort to raise $50,000 to re-launch an independent Third Coast Competition and kickstart a year of financial investment in the organization. We need your support now! Donate here —> https://bit.ly/WeNeedThirdCoast

The backstory: In late 2023, after our most successful Call for Entries ever, we learned suddenly that our longtime financial supporter would no longer be funding the Third Coast Competition. But we can’t let that stop Third Coast – we believe fiercely in the value of this program: made by audio makers, for audio makers.

As a global audio community, we need a Call for Entries/Competition that is curated by other audio makers, creates new peer-to-peer connections, makes space to experiment and take risks, and offers more field building opportunities for makers at every stage of their career.

Please donate today and spread the word about our call to action. https://bit.ly/WeNeedThirdCoast

Art by Andrea Miralles Art/ on IG / Design by Clara May (https://claramay.info/information)

Let’s raise $50,000 to re-launch an independent Third Coast Competition in July Support the Third Coast Competition: by makers, for makers! It’s a challenging time in the audio industry, and a challenging time in our world. But global audio communities are still craving the things that nourish us most… Over the past few years, Third Coast has weathered a number of its own c...

We'd really love to get your feedback on our recent Summer Programming Series. The form takes just 5 mins, and helps us to make future programming better + more inclusive. Please take a moment to fill this out -- you can share your contact info OR leave your form anonymous: https://bit.ly/ProgrammingSeriesFeedback

Share your input with if you engaged w/ any of the following programs...

- Third Coast/RHDF Competition Showcase (https://www.thirdcoastawards.org/)
- Chicago Audio Maker Reconvening
- Collective Listen + Takeover at the Music Box
- Virtual Awards Presentation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y87j3c9SzRM)

Thanks so much to everyone who came out to our first in-person events since 2019, hosted here in Chicago, IL! We're so grateful & inspired that we've re-launched in-person programming with all of you, and we can't wait to take our programming to more communities beyond Chicago.

Both the Chicago Audio Maker Reconvening at Haymarket House & the Collective Listen + Takeover at the Music Box Theatre were part of our 2023 Summer Programming Series, offering programming both in-person and virtually.

If you attended any of the programming from our Summer Programming Series, please consider sharing your feedback! https://bit.ly/ProgrammingSeriesFeedback

Thank you to everyone who took part i our Summer Programming Series, the first pilot initiative of its kind, bringing hybrid programming (in-person + virtual) to audio communities throughout the world. For this series, we celebrated the culmination of the 2022-23 Third Coast/RHDF Competition with three live events; of course, we kicked off our in-person programming here in Chicago, but we're eager to go to other places, too.

The heart and soul of our Summer Programming Series is the Third Coast Competition Showcase - https://thirdcoastawards.org - celebrating 11 Winners & 44 Finalists from the 2022-23 Third Coast Competition. While this concludes our live events, we'll have even more updates premiering on the Showcase in the weeks to come. You can sign up to get these alerts, here: bit.ly/23CompetitionShowcase

As always, our goal is to keep audio experimental, community-driven, and inclusive... that's how we can really push the boundaries of the medium. If you believe in that mission, please consider making a donation to Third Coast! We couldn't do this without your support.

Third Coast/RHDF Competition Showcase (Virtual) Be the first to know about our digital showcase featuring the Third Coast/RHDF Competition Winners, Finalists & Judges!

Sign up for the Worldwide Virtual Awards Presentation: https://bit.ly/VirtualAwardsPresentation

In Chicago, we're gearing up to live stream in just 90 minutes (at 3 P.M. CT)! Gather with your friends, family & colleagues to watch, wherever you are, to find out "who won which award" and to hear directly from the makers of our 2022-23 11 Third Coast/RHDF Award-Winners, some of the most exceptional stories of our time: https://www.thirdcoastawards.org/2022-23-winners

We hope that you'll wear your red carpet finest & share photos using the hashtag .

Worldwide Awards Presentation (Virtual) Live-streamed worldwide on Sunday, August 6.

TOMORROW in Chicago, we're coming together in-person for the first time since 2019 at Haymarket House, be there: https://bit.ly/ChicagoAudioReconvening

And don't forget... the Maker Reconvening will feature a Collective Message Board, designed exclusively for this event.

Attendees can use the Message Board to spread the word about full-time jobs & part-time gigs, tape syncs, calls for pitches, upcoming events, shared resources and all of your radio shows, podcasts & audio projects. Got a weird idea for a new audio project? Put it on the board. Looking for collaborators? Put it on the board. Need advice? Put it on the Board! Remember to bring your own analog materials: any fliers, business cards, stickers, pins, or other print-outs that you might have.

Chicago Audio Maker Reconvening (In-Person) Third Coast is reconvening audio makers in-person! Join us for a night of food, drink, conversation and community at Haymarket House.