The space between cultures — where communication, meaning, and understanding are gained or lost.
Between intention and reception, between one way of seeing and another, and between the assumptions we carry and the realities we encounter.
Interstice is a cultural intelligence practice working with organizations and individuals across culture, communication, identity, and transition.
We examine what happens to meaning when people, ideas, and institutions encounter different cultural contexts.
Culture reaches far beyond language. It informs what we notice and overlook, what we assume, what feels intuitive or unfamiliar, and how we understand one another.
Interstice works with people and organizations when cultural context may be affecting how a message, decision, brand, experience, or relationship is understood. We examine the assumptions at work, consider the situation from more than one cultural position, and help make visible what may otherwise be difficult to see.
The question may be organizational or personal. It may begin with a market, a message, a team, a transition, or a relationship that is not working as expected. The work begins with the situation itself: what is happening, who is involved, what each person or group may be bringing to it, and what becomes visible when it is considered from more than one position.
"Culture hides more than it reveals, and strangely enough what it hides, it hides most effectively from its own participants."— Edward T. Hall
Each begins with a different kind of question, while all draw on the same attention to culture, perception, and meaning. Together, they describe the kinds of work people bring to Interstice and the different ways we may approach it.
For organizations, leaders, and institutions working across cultural contexts — entering markets, communicating across systems, or trying to understand why something that works in one context does not translate cleanly into another.
For organizations and brands communicating across audiences, markets, or cultural contexts. We look at the relationship between what a brand intends to communicate and what people actually perceive, interpret, and experience.
For individuals, families, leaders, and teams navigating cultural transition, global mobility, identity, belonging, or life across more than one cultural system.
For organizations, institutions, conferences, and groups interested in examining culture more closely. We develop talks, workshops, and facilitated conversations around perception, identity, communication, belonging, and the assumptions that may become visible when different ways of seeing meet.
Across organizations, public figures, film and media, theater and performing arts, publishing, sciences, humanities, foundations, healthcare, communications and marketing, East ↔ West engagements, and individuals in cultural transition.
For work that benefits from continuity: an evolving market, organizational change, a long arc of communication across cultures, or another situation in which understanding develops over time. We remain involved as thinking partners, observing patterns, testing assumptions, and informing decisions as the context evolves.
For a defined challenge such as a market entry, brand or communication question, cultural transition, research problem, experience design, or a particular point of friction. We work closely with you to understand what is happening and develop a useful way forward.
A focused day devoted to one question, challenge, or area of uncertainty. You bring the situation; we bring sustained attention, cultural analysis, and an outside perspective. The aim is greater clarity about what you are seeing and what a useful next step might be.
We also work between French and English, carrying not only words but the cultural meaning that informs them.
François-Xavier P. Gleyzon, PhD · Heather Noel
Interstice brings together different ways of seeing, informed by scholarship and lived experience, cultural theory and practical application, language, observation, research, and the experience of living across cultural contexts. Our wider advisory network draws from scholarship, the arts, and other disciplines that deepen the questions we are trying to understand.
Meet the founders & advisors →Cultural distance is not a problem to be solved. It is a condition of human experience — one that, when met with genuine attention, becomes the place where the most meaningful connections are made.
We built Interstice because we have lived in that distance. We know what it costs when communication fails to cross it, and we know what becomes possible when it does. That knowledge is not just academic. For us, it is personal.
We see cultural distance as an opportunity — to build bridges between people, organizations, and communities, and to create understanding where there was once only gap. This is not work we offer from the outside. It is work we do from within.
If you are navigating cultural distance within an organization, a brand, a team, a family, a transition, or a question that is difficult to see clearly from where you are standing, we would welcome the conversation.
You do not need to arrive with the problem fully defined. Understanding what is actually happening is often the first part of the work.
hello@intersticeatelier.com