{"id":1215,"date":"2021-03-23T14:17:09","date_gmt":"2021-03-23T14:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/?p=1215"},"modified":"2021-03-23T14:17:09","modified_gmt":"2021-03-23T14:17:09","slug":"census-stories-bringing-life-to-the-big-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/?p=1215","title":{"rendered":"Census Stories | Bringing Life to the Big Numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Suzanne Newcombe\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Sunday 21 March 2021 was\u00a0<\/span>Census Day<\/span><\/b><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>\u2013 your household will have received a unique access code for you to fill out your census details.\u00a0<\/span>W<\/span>hile this is the first time the census has been done fully online, t<\/span>he first census of England, Wales and Scotland was in 1801 and<\/span> it has been conducted\u00a0<\/span>decennially<\/span>\u00a0(every ten years) since then. T<\/span>he repeating of the same questions every ten years \u2013 determining who lives in the country, how many people and some basic facts about them \u2013 has become essential for forward planning of social services, determining allocation of resources, and, over time, for researching family history and understanding change over time.\u00a0<\/span>While these big numbers are essential for understanding major changes and transformations of society, they do not capture the rich contradictions and experiences of a lived life \u2013 what those categories of identity, place, belief and belonging mean for the people who ticked the boxes.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Religious Studies Department at the Open University has embarked on a<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>UKRI<\/span><\/b>\u00a0funded project<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span>to elicit stories from\u00a0<\/span>diverse\u00a0<\/span>residents of Milton Keynes<\/span>\u00a0on themes of identity, place and belonging in response to the census questions. Through\u00a0<\/span>the facilitation of\u00a0<\/span>the<\/span>\u00a0professional storyteller<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Dominic Kelly,<\/span><\/b><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>local residents will respond to this data and co-create a series of stories.<\/span>\u00a0We will use the stories elicited from local residents to create classroom resources and an Open Learn online course which will help teach about the significance of census data for measuring changes in society \u2013 and what the \u2018big data\u2019 actually looks liked from the perspective of the people who \u2018are\u2019 the statistics. You can see the official announcement at\u00a0https:\/\/ahrc.ukri.org\/research\/readwatchlisten\/features\/public-engagement-with-the-census-research\/<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Place of birth, age and current employment have long been essential questions on the census, recording the movement of people across Britain and increasingly the world. However,\u00a0questions around\u00a0\u2018ethnicity\u2019\u00a0were not included in the census until 1991 \u2013 prior to this point a place of birth in the Commonwealth was used as a proxy for \u2018white\u2019 and \u2018non-white\u2019 populations. The changes to how\u00a0these\u00a0questions\u00a0have\u00a0been phrased and\u00a0their\u00a0increasing relevance for policy decisions can help us trace the development of a category of identity as well as the movements of political concerns.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

“1901 Census UK showing Farquharson and Benningfield Families in Hoddesdon, Herts.x” by Miranda Hine is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0<\/p><\/div>\n

Questions ab<\/span>out religious identification have only been on the census since 2001 \u2013 and perhaps the most dramatic change in this period is the rapid increase of people willing to identify as having \u2018no religion\u2019 (<\/span>shifting<\/span>\u00a0from\u00a0<\/span>15<\/span>% in 2001 to\u00a0<\/span>27.9<\/span>% in 2011<\/span>\u00a0for England and Wales<\/span>). But the<\/span>\u00a0ability to write-in religious affiliation on the<\/span>\u00a0census has\u00a0<\/span>been successfully used my many smaller minority groups to lobby for better acknowledgement in local and national provisions \u2013 including pagans, Sikhs<\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Valmik<\/span>i<\/span>s<\/span>\u00a0and Humanists<\/span>, amongst others.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Better understanding the\u00a0<\/span>complex kaleidoscope of affiliations<\/span>, belief<\/span>s<\/span>\u00a0and practices people draw upon to face<\/span>\u00a0complex<\/span>\u00a0global challenges (like the current pandemic) is part of the core mission of our department to promote the understanding of contemporary religion in historical perspective. We\u2019ll update you about the outputs and project in our social media feeds as the project progresses this Spring.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Suzanne Newcombe\u00a0 Sunday 21 March 2021 was\u00a0Census Day\u00a0\u2013 your household will have received a unique access code for you to fill out your census details.\u00a0While this is the first time the census has been done fully online, the first census of England, Wales and Scotland was in 1801 and it has been conducted\u00a0decennially\u00a0(every ten […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1217,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,36,5,31],"tags":[448,447,452,451,450,449],"class_list":["post-1215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-contemporary-religion-in-historical-perspective-2","category-events","category-news-and-media","category-religious-literacy","tag-census","tag-census-2021","tag-census-stories","tag-data","tag-demographics","tag-numbers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1215"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1220,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215\/revisions\/1220"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}