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University of Bedfordshire
Park Square
Luton
Bedfordshire
UK, LU1 3JU
"I am a trainee broadcast journalist and actor."
“I remember going into the first lecture and being told by the end of it all we would have changed our outlook,” says Nish Nathwani. “I thought, yeah right….”
But Nish had changed his tune by the time he graduated in 1997. “The message of that first lecture became a reality for me and my outlook did totally change. It gave me a new lease of life. I look back on my time at Luton and realise it was all so worthwhile. I’d recommend it to anyone. I’d left school with hardly any qualifications, had my own business but then studied to get qualifications to go to university as a mature student."
“I couldn’t afford to mess up so I missed out a bit on the social side of things. But it did teach me to be analytical and to broaden my horizons. I gained experience on the student magazine and Luton FM. We were lucky to be the first cohort to be involved in all that and it was a really exciting time.”
When Nish left Luton he wanted to go into the media in some shape or form but had a passion for acting. “I didn’t want to be stacking shelves in a supermarket or flipping burgers in a fast food restaurant while I was between roles so I wanted a back-up plan.”
That’s how he came to do a variety of voluntary work experience and ended up at BBC Three Counties Radio. “I was in the right place at the right time having worked hard and done a number of different things. Eventually I was asked to become a Diversity Co-ordinator for the six Eastern Region BBC radio stations."
“That meant going out to schools, colleges and universities telling the students about the BBC as a prospective employer and what it offered in terms of work experience.”
For that work he won an individual bronze and English Region’s team gold in the British Diversity Awards in 2000 and in 2004 was nominated in the first One BBC Awards – the only nominee from BBC Three Counties Radio – and received a certificate from the then Acting Director General, Mark Byford. He has just passed the first three levels of NVQs in Mentoring and has become the first BBC representative to be co-opted as a board member of MENTER.
One of a number of key current projects has been encouraging the Bangladeshi community to produce and present their own programme on BBC Three Counties Radio which has involved training a team of people to become fully conversant with the broadcast medium.
He is complementing that by working as a Trainee Broadcast Journalist, initially with ethnic minority communities in the hope of making a positive contribution to the BBC Three Counties Radio news output, and then crossing over into mainstream news programming.
Meanwhile, the acting dream has not disappeared. He’s done some small parts in commercials, television, film, radio and photographic. “If it did take off then who knows what I’d do…..”
Interview took place in 2005
Apply» Faculties & Departments» Bedfordshire Institute for Media, Arts & Performance» Student Profiles» Nish Nathwani: BA Hons Media Practices with Media Performance
