MCAD Sustainable Design Beach Retreat - Part 4

This is Part 4 of a 4-part series.

→ Read Part 1
→ Read Part 2
→ Read Part 3

Author: Angelina Malizia '22 is a consultant, designer, and community builder based in Portland, Oregon. Her work centers on circular systems, material reuse, and the human connections that make sustainability tangible.

Enduring Lessons - Part 4

Since returning, I’ve been thinking about each person who came, their brilliance, insight, curiosity, creativity, and generosity. Robin Wall Kimmerer's, The Serviceberry came up several times during the retreat, and its message has lingered with me. It reminds us that the world is built on cycles of gift and return, of reciprocity rather than extraction or even transaction.

These are heavy times to live and work in. When someone asked what gives us hope, the room fell quiet for a long moment. Then, slowly, we began to reflect. I realized that hope doesn’t have to come from sweeping initiatives, global movements, or the institutions we hold up as saviors. It can begin with something small, a single relationship, a shared intention, a simple act of care. Hope is the web woven from these quiet connections, the moments when we come together, listen deeply, and choose to nurture something beyond ourselves.

Hope looks like tending the land that feeds you.
It looks like mending what you’ve inherited.
It looks like sharing a meal of mussels and mushrooms, gifted to us and gathered with care.

In the end, this retreat was less about escape and more about return, to place, to community, to an inner truth, and to the kind of design that begins and ends with relationship.

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