BAFTA BUSINESS Nicky Sargent left NHEHS in 1981 to read English at the University of Bristol. After an initial career in advertising and magazine publishing in the early 1990s, Nicky moved into the burgeoning television post production sector. In 1998, after several years as MD of a leading company in the sector, Nicky and her business partner Vikki Dunn co-founded The Farm Group, a multi-award winning broadcast post-production company that has grown to over 350 employees in the UK and US, delivering creative editing and sound post production to the international TV industry. The Farm has contributed to many hundreds of thousands of primetime programming hours both in the UK and USA, with an Emmy, nine RTS awards, seven BAFTA TV Craft Awards and four Broadcast Awards for Best Post Production House for its high calibre of work. Nicky’s huge success led to a BAFTA Special Award, one of the Academy’s highest honours, in the summer of 2020, in recognition of her exceptional career and dedication to the field of television post production across a wide range of genres. What are your favourite memories of your time at NHEHS? The Boars’ Head Carol was absolutely magical. It was only the Upper Sixth who were involved and I remember the excited feeling and the link to tradition. It is a special memory totally unique to school. And I remember having a lot of fun and playing. I also clearly remember the feeling the school gave that girls could do anything. Unfortunately, forty years on I don’t think the world has got much better in terms of the progression of women in the workplace, but forty years ago I was as passionate about having a proper career as any girl would be leaving school now. However, I think it is much harder for girls leaving school now as they are expected to be Instagram stars plus surgeons plus everything, and we didn’t have that pressure. Did you have a favourite teacher or subject at NHEHS? I remember being imbued with a great love of literature 5
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and politics. I loved our English teacher Mrs Hamlyn, she was Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society, and she had a huge, massive effect on my self-belief and that I could go on and study English. I am still in irregular touch with her now and I think very, very highly of her. She was so inspirational. I was part of the Magazine Committee and our year started BLOT (Books, Literature or Talk) with Mrs Hamlyn. I was also in school plays, on stage, as there wasn’t really any backstage, nothing like the facilities there are now at NHEHS. I also remember Mrs Smith for Politics and Mrs Sergant (no relation!) for French who were both great. How do you feel NHEHS instilled a ‘girls can achieve anything’ mindset during your time at school? I think the best thing was that it was not explicit, we were just treated as people as there was no comparison in the classroom to boys. I did not know that some people thought then, and some still do now, that women aren’t quite as good as men for certain jobs. I literally did not know that until I left the school, which was good as it was empowering. We did have one year of sewing lessons but we were mercilessly unkind to that poor teacher and she had a bit of a breakdown and left the school. There were no more sewing lessons after that. There wasn’t cookery or anything, you went straight into a physics lab or politics session or whatever. There was no concept of subjects being ‘female’ or ‘male’. How did you start your career in post-production? After university I worked in an advertising agency which was part of Saatchi & Saatchi in Bristol for a year and
