Neil Sandell
Neil Sandell (He/Him) worked as a current affairs producer at CBC Radio for many years, and was a senior producer on Outfront, a pioneering program that helped ordinary people turn their life stories into documentaries.
Since moving to France in 2014, he has made sound-rich documentaries for podcasts and broadcast. He follows his curiosity, diving into an eclectic range of subjects: prehistoric cave paintings, how wolves became dogs, the role of luck in life, and the seductive charm of a painting found at flea market. Whatever the theme, he weaves an element of the personal into his work.
Neil’s work has won top honors at Prix Marulic (Croatia) and Grand Prix Nova (Romania). The Collector was a selection of Prix Phonurgia in France and Transom’s Small, Random, & Meaningful collection. His most recent work, The Last Laugh, won at Prix Marulic in 2024. He is proud of being a Radio Impact Award winner at the Third Coast Festival. Neil has given workshops in audio storytelling at the Third Coast Festival, the Hearsay Festival in Ireland, as well as in Greenland, The Netherlands, and Norway.
You can find his work on SoundCloud, as well as the Third Coast archives.
producer
To begin, restating rules is used to avoid actually following rules, just as this more-than-one-sentence description avoids the request for a single sentence through the misuse of the semi-colon; later, mundane answering machine messages become menacing, as the producer manipulates their meaning with music.
Carl Sandburg inspires a meditation on private worlds as we ride the El.
A contagion of phone messages add up to an empty office.
The village of Alert Bay, on Canada's Pacific coast, is a study in paradox for the teens growing up there. They have a rich aboriginal culture, but live in grinding poverty.
"Between Friends" is the story of one woman's coming to terms with being sexually victimized by her father.
Cindy Harasen is not the first the first mother to think that her daughter might be from another planet.
This hour, one man who needs to devour as much air as he can and another who's at his best while holding his breath.
This hour: we explore some big ideas – justice, injustice, punishment, and redemption – through small, powerful, personal stories.
This hour: kids sing opera, they talk about life on a remote island, and they opine about running the world.
This hour: people living in the in-betweens.
presenter
Everyone's telling their story these days –- in blogs, podcasts, on YouTube. But what makes one story a yawn or self-indulgent and another one compelling? How do you tell a personal story as a radio documentary?
What makes one story pitch so irresistible it's a "yes" halfway through... and the next doomed for rejection?
judge
First round 2016 Third Coast/Richard H. Driehaus Competition
The winners of the 2016 Third Coast / Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition were selected from over 550 entries from around the world.
participant
November 1-3, Chicago
October 20 - 22, Chicago