Ever Clinton 

Born in Chicago, Illinois, on November 14, 1994 I was the youngest of 8 kids. We stayed in an apartment building, just blocks away from our cousins and one floor up from Nuna, my grandmother. When I was three, we moved to Milwaukee. To this day, I'm still not sure why.
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While we stayed with family in MKE, my mama worked hard to build up her savings for a home. When Mama straightened out her finances, we moved to our first house, where we played with all the kids from our block. Then we moved to another neighborhood and made friends very quickly. We also met our god-brother during that stay. Upon our next move, I met my best friend. Although we went to different schools –– she to a public school and I to a private school and –– we raced home to finish our homework and play double-dutch all day long.

A couple of years flew by and we moved again. Although I kept in contact with my best friend, I missed her dearly and would walk to see her whenever I could. Walking was the only way because someone was always using the family car and I did not know how to catch the city bus. Looking back, I should've just asked how to ride the bus, but Mama probably would not have let me because I was a 7th grader. During our stay in this location, I did not make any block friends; I was too busy doing homework. Some more time passed when we moved again, but this time we resettled in the Washington Park Area. 

Currently, I am studying architecture, urban design, and French at UW-Milwaukee. I intern at Workshop Architects, research with Professor Arijit Sen through the SURF Grant (Student Undergraduate Research Fellowship Grant), dance with the Ko-Thi West African Dance Company as an intern dancer, and am a Stein's Scholar with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee. Teaming up with students from the Buildings-Landscapes-Culture Field School in the School of Architecture and Urban Planning, I hope to better understand the genetic makeup of a community. Through architecture and community engagement, I seek to find out what makes a community thrive and how it can improve the lives of its residents. Through architecture and urban design, I hope to effectively create space in which many may live, work, play and learn.
"My dream is more about equity within the neighborhoods...it's one thing to give people an equal opportunity, but we need to meet people where they are, so they could have a better sense of what they could be."