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As a parent, Maria McKnight wanted to take her young child to a place where they could have a productive play day in her neighbohood of Dorchester, instead of having to travel downtown or other out of the way locations.
She often wished that there could be a space like this in her own community for all kids, especially those of color.
After sitting out in the parks and other spaces in the winter, the vision came to her to create her company, 2 Birds No Stones Sensory in 2018, a travel ready sensory experience, where she goes to different spaces in the community and does sensory play with youth of color.
McKnight talks about the sole purpose of her creating her company for youth in her community.
“The sole purpose is to help people, especially young people who have anxiety, find more holistic coping mechanisms that include the opportunity to touch, play, think, and experience nature,” she said.
Today, her company is still going strong, as it is leading efforts to support holistic healing by providing unique sensory play with Indigenous or custom designs with indoor or outdoors options – with a primary focus of serving urban communities.
She also shared the benefits of sensory play, especially her commitment to providing her services in urban communities for Black and Brown youth.
“For children, it builds language skills, cognitive skills, and social skills. But for me, what I focus on is helping young people who have feelings of anxiety. Some children might be autistic or some children may have ADHD,” she said.
Last year, McKnight and her company were able to partner with a small non-profit organization where she was outdoors in Roxbury on the Roxbury Sunflower Project, where she worked with children and the aging population on a six-week art series.
“I did something different every week, and because I’m a woman of color and I’m also Native American, I include those experiences. So, one week I did something called sand art, which for the Native American community is almost like a healing ceremony. And with those play dates, all ages are welcome. So, we had from children to the aging population out in the parking lot,” she said.
Currently, McKnight is incorporating her love for science, as she creates “nebula-galaxy universe art works” and three dimensional paintings, ‘Art You Can Touch,’ where she works to inspire the human curiosity of all things that exist in interstellar space.
This project represents a learning modality through “The Boston Blackstronauts,”program she has created, which works to bring creative sensory based STEAM into schools and community spaces. She and her child have astronaut suits that they have showcased outdoors in the neighborhood and community events in the city.
She talks about the excitement one child had when they attended the MIT Toymaker event in Cambridge, hoping to inspire Black and brown youth who may be at the event.
“MIT had this Toymaker event where their students make toys and showcase them outdoors. So, I said to my son, let’s put our astronaut suits on and go up there…We got out there. There weren’t any Black and brown children, which is fine, but there was a little Asian boy. He looked at me. He made a beeline to me. And I’m like, okay, let me talk to this kid,” she said.
“He gets up to me. He’s out of breath. So, I said, hi, how are you? He says, have you really been in space? I said, well, you know, I really want to go. But I’m in training right now…He goes, ‘yeah, yeah.’ I said, ‘anyways, anyways, what’s your favorite planet?’ We have this whole engaging conversation,” she said.
McKnight said that while children in our communities can see astronauts on television, it’s different when youth see her and her son with their suits on.
“When do you see [an astronaut] walking through your community or showing up in your library or showing up in your school? You don’t. So, when people say, are you really an astronaut? I go, ‘well, I’m representing. I don’t say no anymore…but more importantly, I inspire our children to greatness by doing sensory play,” she said.
It was actually her experience with her child that caused her to begin to implement the sensory experience into her company, after the child was diagnosed with extreme anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“And that’s when I really began to include the sensory piece into what I do, because I had to become [the child’s] homeschool teacher, his therapist. He went into something called disassociation, where [the child’s] eyes would roll back, [the child’s] brain would check out, and [the child] would pass out…,” she said.
After doing some online research on how she could help her child, McKnight found some helpful ideas, such as painting the rooms relaxing color, playing ethereal music, and having a friend of hers do sound bowl healing.
However, McKnight said that it was her time with her child outdoors in nature, where she saw the child come back to center.
“So, I said to him, one of our nature walks, okay, well, this happened to you, this happened to me, this happened to us. I don’t know why, maybe it happened, so we can help other people. We should do something. What do you think we should do? [The child] said, I don’t know. I said, I don’t know either, but I know how to make a fairy garden.
So, she made a fairy garden at the Dorchester Park for people to have a place to go visit and find joy and happiness, placing loose sand toys and little elves there.
A month later, it was McKnight’s birthday. When her friends asked her what she wanted to do to celebrate, she said that she wanted to put a gratitude tree outside in the park and her friends obliged.
“So, it was a tree and I put up this like plastic around it and I put like all these experiences around it, reading books, always positive books, cards where you could help yourself, anything I made with resin because I’m also a resin artist,” she said.
“The beautiful thing about that is people were writing me (on) these little, they look like paper leaves, where people could write a message on it (of) what they were grateful for. They were grateful for me, their dogs, their life. And this is when, during the pandemic, when we were all afraid to just come out and be out,” she said.
Along with the tree, she put another sensory experience across the walkway where there was a vacant tree stump, which she had walked by for some months.
“Every time I walked by, I threw some leaves and I threw some like rocks, pebbles, anything I could do to bring it up to a higher level. And what I created in that was a little frog with a violin doing a whole concerto concert for his little fairy friends.
“Then next to that, there was a tree. So, I brought a violin…and I covered it with plastic and I put up a book where if you scan the QR code, you could hear it play the violin concerto. So, I always try to marry everything together. And so, that’s how I started doing all this stuff, all these, I call it sensory experiences out in the parks,” she said.
While McKnight is passionate about bringing her sensory and art travel experience throughout the city, she shared that funding for her business is an obstacle that she works to overcome.
“I think funding and grants and all that stuff, because I’m an LLC, I’m not a nonprofit. It feels like I operate like a nonprofit and I don’t want to be a nonprofit. So, even though I had a fiscal sponsor, I still couldn’t get the grants and I couldn’t figure that out and I couldn’t fathom that. But even so, I still continue to do what I do,” she said.
Her business is impacting youth, as she shares another experience of her working on a painting with a young girl in one of the local libraries.
“One of the things she said to me is…Are you really an astronaut? I said, well, I create things that look like space. Doesn’t that make me an astronaut? She goes, yeah, I guess.
She comes back 10 minutes later. So, are you really a scientist? I said, well, when I mix these compounds together to create this resin, doesn’t that make me a scientist? [She says] ‘Yeah, I guess’,” she said.
“Then, she says, I used to want to be an astronaut. [I said], What do you mean used to? What are you like 9 or 10? What happened that would change your mind? I don’t want our kids to look at their plight in life, their communities, and feel like they can’t even try,” she said.
Lastly, McKnight shared what her advice would be for Black entreprenuers and entreprenuers of color who may want to open a business of their own.
“Definitely get into a program [that helps entreprenuers]. I’m not saying that they’re going to be perfect and they’re going to know everything, but you have to have a starting point or a guiding point, because you’ll spend a lot of time, unnecessary time, probably going in circles…You have to get around people who know more than you and it can inspire you,” she said.
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