Project Overview
A chance to pause and reset. first-hand is a unique, multisensory experience designed to counteract the overstimulation of screen-heavy culture. Participants are invited on a tactile, olfactory, and gustatory journey. Through blindfolds, headphones, and guided interactions, it creates a space for pausing and enhancing the imagination. Rooted in Dr. Seligman’s PERMA model of positive psychology, it promotes mental well-being by reducing fatigue, burnout, and apathy. Marvellous stories from the animal kingdom, told through sensory stimuli, foster a deeper relationship with nature encouraging curiosity, happiness, engagement, and meaning. Ideal for those feeling disconnected in an accelerating world, first-hand serves as a restorative, immersive “reset button”, bridging mental wellness and environmental awareness through an artistic experience.
Expected Impact
First-hand seeks to offer a restorative, immersive space that promotes mental well-being through sensory engagement and guided imagination. In an overstimulated world dominated by screens, the project helps participants reconnect with their bodies, emotions, and environment by focusing on often-neglected senses — touch, scent, and taste. It encourages slowness, presence, and curiosity, fostering emotional clarity and attention restoration. We hope first-hand will spark meaningful shifts in how audiences relate to themselves and the world — prioritizing care, connection, and calm over speed and distraction. It also models how art can support mental health outside clinical or diagnostic frameworks. Long-term, we aim to contribute to a cultural movement that values rest, embodied experience, and ecological awareness. first-hand aims to reach diverse audiences and inspire others to center sensory care in cultural and artistic practice.
Applicant Background
Nitish Jain makes multi-sensory experiences using the mediums of architecture, performance art, storytelling and objects. He invites audiences to engage all the senses — touch, taste, smell, sound, and sight. His works carry a poetic sensibility, drawing on metaphor, memory, and myth. They explore themes of fatigue and rest, with attention to both human and ecological wellbeing. His perspective, drawing from the rasa aesthetics and phenomenology, is shaped by ecological, more-than-human, and postcolonial lenses. Nitish makes participatory performances, lectures, one-to-one theatre, restorative experiences and spaces. His works have been showcased at international art festivals across Czechia, Germany, India, UAE and in regions and communities in Italy, Slovenia, Norway, Portugal and the UK. Born in Lucknow (°1989), he trained as an architect (SSAA, India) and as a scenographer (DAMU, Czechia). Nitish is based between India and Czechia.