SHiFT – An Interactive Installation at JITO Youthon

SHiFT is an interactive installation designed by Suchit Mutha, Akash Shingvi, and Mandar Khele for JITO Youthon, a mega youth event held in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, India’s largest district. The two-day program gives young people a rich and transforming experience, balancing individuality and teamwork to turn participation into a personal breakthrough. The framing matters because India is a young country: half of its population is under the age of 25, and two thirds are younger than 35. By 2027 the country is likely to hold one of the largest workforces in the world, with around a billion people aged between 15 and 64.

The event built itself around the aim “Discover, Learn, Transform.” Since the theme spoke of change, the designers wanted every participant to perceive that change directly rather than hear about it. They believe change happens when people think and do things differently, so their main objective was to let people perceive and interpret the same thing through different dimensions. Only after reaching a particular point and distance from the installation does the abstract form resolve, and the viewer reads what it spells: YOUTHON.

Building meaning from scrap

The structure pairs a skeleton of scrap RCC reinforcement bar with a skin of waste paper tubes. Each participant inserts a paper tube piece into the abstract letterforms shaped from the bars, so the basic infrastructure is set up first and the youth complete it through their own contributions while JITO adds the colour. This logic of participatory design turns an audience into co-authors, a method that gives a temporary event the sense of collective ownership that fixed buildings rarely achieve.

Temporary and event-based installation work asks different questions than permanent construction. It must read clearly at a distance, assemble and dismantle quickly, and often lean on reused or low-cost material to stay light and affordable. Using salvaged reinforcing steel and discarded tubes answers all three at once, while quietly modelling the kind of reuse a young, fast-growing audience can carry forward. The perceptual trick, where scattered parts only cohere from one vantage point, mirrors the event’s message that perspective shapes what we see. For a generation described here as the nation’s future, an object you help finish with your own hands is a fitting place to start.