Educator · Author · Speaker
Advocate For more than four decades, my work has crossed education, research, writing, community leadership, volunteering, disability advocacy and lived experience.
2019 — Australian Pacific LNG Community Hero Award
2021 — Community Leader recognition Through compassionate mentoring, practical support, and community connection
FORMATION: ARCHITECT · SERVICE · LEARNING
I wanted to study architecture. My father had other ideas. Living in Townsville to complete the degree was not something he was prepared to fund. He insisted I study Early Childhood Education instead.
BUT THE ARCHITECT NEVER REALLY LEFT.
I have always loved design, planning and project management. I have even helped friends work through the early planning of home extensions before the drafts-person or architect took over. People. Ideas. Learning. Systems. Communities. Problems. Possibilities. Many years ago, The Art of Possibility became an informant to my True North.
1974 / BRISBANE
I was sixteen when the Brisbane floods devastated homes and communities. My father was involved with Lions and was helping establish a centre to coordinate people, resources and assistance for flood-affected families. By the end of the first day, I was running the Relief Centre. For around two weeks I helped coordinate volunteers, resources and assistance, including working with the Army response. NAVIGATING COMPLEXITY. THE PATTERN WAS ALREADY THERE.
At Brisbane Kindergarten College I studied human development across the lifespan — from birth to death — and undertook a three-year child study. I learnt to observe. To notice development and patterns. To consider behaviour in context. To look beneath what was immediately visible. I DISCOVERED I WAS REALLY, REALLY SMART. Four postgraduate courses followed. And eventually I did what my mother had been telling me I should do. I EARNED MY DOCTORATE. My mother knew something I hadn't realised yet.
Not because teaching wasn't important. Because I kept noticing the things around it: the system, the structure, the people, the resources, what wasn't working, what hadn't been thought of yet. As Queensland State Director of the Australian Literacy Educators' Association, I co-chaired a major international literacy conference on the Gold Coast involving around 2,000 delegates. When I realised during the conference that aspects of our venue contract weren't being honoured
— I CALLED IT.
The architect was still there.
I was also co-editor of ALEA's national journal, Practically Primary. I edited. I interviewed. I wrote. I taught. And I became increasingly interested in what stories can do. Nicole King — before I returned to my maiden name, Nikki Creber.
“Words, mere words” Shakespeare said … but words, stories can change the world!
I have never been very good at accepting “that's just how it's done.” Sometimes systems work. Sometimes they don't. And sometimes we continue doing things simply because that's how they've always been done. I was also co-editor of ALEA's national journal, Practically Primary. I edited. I interviewed. I wrote. I taught. And I became increasingly interested in what stories can do. Nicole King — before I returned to my maiden name, Nikki Creber.
WHY?
WHO DECIDED THAT?
IS IT STILL USEFUL?
COULD WE DO IT DIFFERENTLY?
BRULES.
Bullshit rules. These are transferred to us in our earliest conditioning with family — beliefs, expectations and assumptions we absorb without question. IS IT MINE? DID I CHOOSE IT? DOES IT STILL SERVE ME? CONSCIOUS DELIBERATION.
THE PRESENT DAY NIKKI
At 48 came four words: “YOU HAVE PARKINSON'S DISEASE.” Later came the added complexity of Multiple System Atrophy. The woman who had spent decades observing, questioning, learning, researching, teaching, building and problem-solving suddenly had an extraordinarily difficult new subject to investigate.
MYSELF.
The pattern was still there.