It started with a conversation

Jennifer Brandel learned about the physical interstitium from her friend Jessica Clark — not a scientist, but a visionary who ran something called Dot Connector Studio. Jessica moved between technology, media, futurism, philanthropy, and climate solutions, and her work didn't fit inside a job description. In many ways, she embodied the very patterns the metaphor would later help illuminate.

The concept of the interstitium unlocked something. Jenn published an essay in Orion Magazine and reported a story for Radiolab, exploring the metaphor and introducing the term “Interstitionary” as a way of naming forms of connective work that often exist without shared language or recognition. 

The response was immediate and far-reaching. People from across sectors, disciplines, and geographies began recognizing themselves in the metaphor and sharing stories of the relational work they had been carrying for years.

As those conversations deepened, Ariel Brooks and Christine Lai began accompanying Jenn in exploring the questions, relationships, and possibilities emerging through the work. Over time, that accompaniment evolved into a shared stewardship of the growing field of inquiry and relational community taking shape around the work. 

Informed by hundreds of survey responses and community conversations, the three of us began co-stewarding a relational container for this emerging field of inquiry and practice: a space for connection, support, shared meaning-making and storytelling. 

As of Spring 2026, more than 800 people (and counting!) have found their way into the broader Interstitia community through articles, referrals, gatherings, and word of mouth. Increasingly, we meet people already speaking about the Interstitum and Interstitionaries – often without realizing this is the work we’ve been helping to cultivate! 

We had no funding and no institution. We had a hunch, a growing set of relationships, and hundreds of people reflecting back that something important was beginning to take shape. 

That evolving relational field is what we’re growing.

Why This Matters NOW

We’re living through a moment when institutions are faltering and trust is eroding, even as the crises people are navigating — climate disruption, economic precarity, political fragmentation, physical and mental health epidemics.

Every strategy for change — policy, organizing, advocacy, movement building — depends on something beneath it: 

• Trust between people who wouldn't otherwise be in the same room. 

• Ideas that travel because someone spotted a pattern and connected the dots. 

• Relationships that hold even when institutions don't. 

When these foundations break down, everything built on top of it becomes more fragile.

Disconnection isn't just a side effect of the crises we're facing. It's how those crises sustain themselves. Which means tending the connective tissue isn't a soft priority — it's the work that makes the rest of the work possible.

As existing systems continue incentivizing competition, individualism, and transactional exchange — they weaken trust and collective capacity. Despite enormous investment, many current change strategies struggle to produce durable, coordinated action.

What's missing is not vision or commitment. It's recognition, resourcing, and cultivation of the relational infrastructure that enables systems — and the people who comprise them — to sense, adapt, coordinate, and care.

The polycrisis is accelerating. We need shock absorbers. We need people who can flow between institutions when institutions can't move. We need the social interstitium to be tended.

Interstitionaries are core infrastructure. We aim to make sure they are visible, valued and supported.