Kente Cloth Workshops
Kwasi Asare welcomes all opportunities to share the Ashanti Kente weaving tradition with national, international and local audiences, including museums, universities, colleges, primary and secondary schools and arts and culture organizations. Kwasi’s Kente demonstrations, exhibitions and interactive workshops are adaptable to all ages and educational levels. With hands-on weaving with both the traditional loom as well as Kwasi’s specially-designed small hand looms, adults and children alike enjoy the presentations and gain a greater appreciation for this rich cultural history.
Mathematics, Art and the Mind-Body Connection
Kwasi Asare’s workshops are unique and almost unlike any other kind of educational or cultural presentation. His workshops explore mathematics as Kente cloth weaving naturally involves careful visualizations, pattern recognition and calculations. But the tactile sensations and artfulness of weaving has a way of breaking down math anxiety by engaging students in the challenges of problem solving for their own designs. This can be especially rewarding for primary, middle and high school students who sometimes have a visceral fear of classroom mathematics.
Working with a loom by hand – as with other artist forms like painting, music or pottery – produces a sense of mindfulness and relaxation that leads to a complete absorption with the art. This is a very healthy alternative to our society’s continual drumbeat of excessive stimulation and distraction by computer screens, TVs, video games and electronic devices. Through years of experience of working people of many different backgrounds, ages and cultures, Kwasi has cultivated an effective way of teaching that helps his students integrate many different kinds of learning through the creativity of Kente weaving.
Tutoring Calculus and other Mathematics
As a school teacher and a trained mathematician Kwasi Asare, has often taught classroom mathematics, in addition to his unique way of integrating math as part of this Kente weaving exhibitions and workshops. Kwasi organizes individual and small group tutoring services in calculus, trigonometry and algebra for those students who are having difficulty mastering certain concepts or would like to accelerate their learning and advance their mathematical skills to a higher level beyond their classroom lessons. Sometimes additional help and support is the key to making a breakthrough in mastering higher levels of mathematical abstraction.
Kwasi Asare: Master Kente Weaver, Mathematician, African Sage & Teacher 