At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, artist Ekene Ijeoma and his group Poetic Justice at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology began thinking about potential miscounts in the U.S census.
The Census Bureau was significantly impacted in its ability to collect data on households and different populations in the country due to public health restrictions.
In response to the difficulties the bureau faces, Ijeoma’s group launched an art project called ‘A Counting.’ It invites people to call in and count to 100 in their native language. Ogden is one of the five cities in the nation to participate in the project.
Ijeoma said they were thinking about how many marginalized communities historically have been underrepresented in census counts.
“That led us to think about what it means to count and who counts,” he said. “It came to, well if we could count to a hundred, which is a whole [number], using all the languages that are spoken in the U.S., that that could be a better representation of our society.”
To read more about this project, visit KUER.
This article is published through the Utah News Collaborative, a partnership of news organizations in Utah that aim to inform readers across the state.