“Kiara, can I see your Thing-A-Ma-Jig real quick?” asks Dyon Davidson, the founder and instructor of Beadly Speaking Kidz, a four-week jewelry making summer camp for girls.
It’s not that she can’t find the word she’s looking for — Davidson is calling out the name of a legitimate contraption, one her students have been using to make geometric shapes with wire. During week two of the program, they mastered the basics, like how to work with jump rings, which connect pendants, clasps, hooks, and more to metal jewelry. Next week, Davidson will teach them how to hand-paint their creations.
But this afternoon, the girls are free to show off what they’ve learned so far. When I walk in, Kiara Hinostraza, 12, is putting final touches on a pair of beaded ear cuffs.
“The best part was making the dangly things, and the hardest part was making the shape of the ear cuffs. They’re supposed to be exactly the same,” she told me.
“We have a curriculum, but I’m not tight about sticking to it,” Davidson said later, after camp had ended for the day. Supported by Baltimore Children and Youth Fund, her program — which began in 2022 and takes place over four weeks each summer at Baltimore Unity Hall — teaches girls eight and older about jewelry making and entrepreneurship, among other life skills.
“When I see that they’re ready [to try something new], I don’t want them to hold back. I just hope that, in the process, they don’t feel pressured. In the past, stuff would be too hard, and kids would cry, and I’m like, ‘Ain’t no crying in jewelry making.’ You either get it, or you don’t. But we don’t cry. We keep it moving to something else.”
This approach to creativity — and hardship — has pulled Davidson, a native of Montego Bay, Jamaica and a former public school teacher, through trying times.
The daughter of a seamstress and granddaughter of a cobbler, “I was used to seeing people with some type of talent using their hands,” Davidson said. And though she never thought she’d follow in her family members’ footsteps, looking back, there were some early signs.
“Watching my mom make clothes, I used to play with the fabric scraps and make stuff out of them, not knowing I was crafty,” she said, telling me about the time she made her mom a card with lace and red construction paper as an eight-year-old.
“I don’t know why I made a heart. I don’t even think it was Valentine’s Day,” Davidson said. But her mom “loved it so much. She showed everybody like it was Picasso.”
In 2004, it was Davidson’s turn to be there for her mom, who suffered a brain aneurysm and required countless procedures and months of rehab.
“She had to learn everything all over again,” Davidson said.
“When they released her from her rehab facility, they said she needed to learn additional skills at home to help her recover. I was like, ‘Isn’t that what she came here for? I don’t know what to do.’”
And then, as if on cue, Davidson’s crafty senses reemerged, and off she went to Walmart. After looking through a few instruction books, she gathered everything she needed —wires, beads, and other basics — to make jewelry with her mom at home.
Stringing beads and using handheld tools like pliers helped her mom regain her cognitive abilities and hand-eye coordination skills. It only took a few months to see significant improvement.
Before long, “She’s able to hold a pen and write,” Davidson said. “She’s able to button her shirt. She’s able to zip up her jacket. She’s remembering more, and I see her creating different patterns with the beads.”
One day, Davidson came home from work to find her mother making earrings on her own. From there, she was unstoppable.
“She wore her stuff out whenever she went to the store, and there was one store in particular where all the ladies knew her prior to surgery,” Davidson said.
“One of the ladies was getting married and asked my mom to make her earrings and a bracelet. So I guided her, and she made a set not only for the bride, but for a couple people in the bridal party. To see that was amazing. I got to see back then, just how excited people can become working with beads and wire.”
Her mom continued down the long path to recovery, and Davidson relentlessly pursued her craft. Eventually, she started hosting jewelry nights at home for friends.
“But whenever I would try to host a class, no one would show up. People couldn’t see the vision of where I was going and what I was doing,” she said.
Things shifted after the pandemic. She continued to improve, began to post her work online, and soon, her items started selling. In 2020, with the help of the Baltimore Children and Youth Fund, she started hosting jewelry making classes over Zoom for kids.
“I took the materials to the kids all over the city, dropped off tools and jewelry making supplies, and sent a Zoom link every week to parents for about eight weeks. We had an amazing program where the kids logged in and [worked on] jewelry making, just as good as what you saw today.”
You get a kid who doesn’t talk and is very shy, and then at the end of camp, this person is at the table, selling their stuff
Dyon Davidson, Founder of Beadly Speaking Kidz camp
Two years later, Beadly Speaking Kidz came to fruition as an in-person program. The camp runs for four weeks each summer for five days a week, giving students the tools to not only make jewelry but market it, sell it (the girls get to keep half their earnings), and use their skills later on. This year’s cohort celebrated the completion of the program with a marketplace event in August at Baltimore Unity Hall, where they showcased their creations, handled cash, and interacted with the public like professionals. Beforehand, they designed personal logos using Canva and came up with their own business names.
“You get a kid who doesn’t talk and is very shy, and then at the end of camp, this person is at the table, selling their stuff,” Davidson said.
“You see this kid telling people, ‘Thank you for stopping by my table.’ People are asking them, ‘How much is this?’ and they’re telling them the prices. They’re bagging up the stuff for the people, and they actually learn how to make change. Kids don’t use money that often anymore. So all the skills that they learn in math, they’re putting that to work.”
Before their time at camp is up, Davidson also encourages girls to learn the value of self-care through things like journaling and daily affirmations.
“We have conversations. We talk about how conflict resolution. We talk about how to pour into ourselves with our affirmation cards,” Davidson said, adding that campers get to choose an affirmation every morning. (“I am worthy.” “I am joyful.” “I am talented.”)
Camryn Downing, formerly a camper and now Davidson’s program assistant who has been with Beadly Speaking for two summers now, describes the camp environment as “comforting.”
“The kids get to focus on something fun and not be outside in the streets,” she said.
“They’re focusing on something that can make them money eventually. So if all fails, they know how to make jewelry.”
Now 19, the bright Morgan State University student embraces her role as mentor to Davidson’s much younger campers.
“It feels good that I can reach out to kids and touch their hearts and give them a space where they can ask personal questions.”
In the future, Davidson hopes to work with a licensed therapist or social worker who can help the girls navigate sensitive topics. But to do that, Beadly Speaking, which is low-cost for campers’ families at the moment and includes a catered lunch each day, needs more funding. Right now, Davidson asks families to donate when they can.
“We do a good job with the funding that we get now. We just want to get to the point where we’re not starting from zero every year and waiting… hoping that something magical happens,” she said, adding that she hopes to introduce a month-long program for adults someday.
“I feel like there are a lot of people in the community who are creative, who never had the opportunity to really live out their inner child,” Davidson said.
“This would be the perfect place for them to learn how to do that. It’s not a work environment. It’s free. It’s joy. I feel like a lot of us adults need to experience joy again.”
As her mother faces new health complications, making space for joy and gratitude is part of what helps Davidson keep pushing.
“I think sometimes we’re not prepared for what it’s like going from being an employee to running a program or a business, so I had to find my ‘why,’” she said.
“‘Why am I doing this? What’s the value in it for me?’ The value is, I get to live out my God-given talents. I’ve been called to bring joy, to bring peace, to bring hope.”