Workshop announcement – Berlin 2025
Assessing and managing
risks to your collections –
The Cultural Property Risk Analysis Model
CPRAM
2025 November 18-21
Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection, Remise,
Spandauer Damm 7, 14059 Berlin (Charlottenburg)
What is the problem?
Preventive conservation is one of the most important aspects of collection management. Scientific and technical knowledge are constantly evolving, but are often applied slowly, incorrectly, or not at all in everyday museum life. Many experts and institutions involved in the preservation of cultural assets are guided by unrealistic standards, guidelines, or lists of best practices, usually without clear priorities or realistic user expectations. Given limited resources, decision-makers are usually faced with a difficult choice when planning sustainable preservation strategies.
What can be done to counteract this?
The Cultural Property Risk Analysis Model (CPRAM) developed by Dr. Robert Waller is a framework for evidence-based and clearly reasoned risk analysis. It supports and empowers decision-makers to develop preventive conservation strategies, thereby reducing the risk of loss and damage to collections.
CPRAM does not view risk management in collections as a separate system, but rather as a shared responsibility embedded within existing administrative structures and systems. The model enables an integrated view of all expected damage and loss to cultural property, as well as its prevention/mitigation, and is therefore a useful tool for developing more efficient conservation strategies. Conservation requirements and priorities are no longer viewed as overhead costs, but as sound, strategic investments.
How do you learn this?
The workshop is aimed at anyone whose role contributes to protecting collections in cultural institutions. Participants learn to set priorities for preventive conservation and decide how best to invest the limited resources available to them.
The training takes place in four block seminars (approx. 5-6 hours). Three days are devoted to participatory learning, while on the fourth day, participants work with the facilitators to develop ways in which the ideas and methods taught can be profitably applied and implemented in their own institutions.
The content includes, among other things, a comprehensive set of well defined specific risks structured according to the well-known “10 Agents of Deterioration” of the Canadian Conservation Institute coupled with the “3 Types of Risk” established in the CPRAM. Quantification is based on ratio changes in collection value and a 1% social discount rate. The use of a simple but clear model facilitates “sensitivity analysis” to establish where uncertainty is significant or not.
The language of instruction is English and all materials are provided in English. The presentations are subtitled in German, and questions and comments can be asked in either English or German and on screen translations will be provided.
Who is leading the workshop?
The course is being led by Dr. Robert Waller and Moya Dumville (Protect Heritage Corp., Ottawa, ON) as part of the BKM project “Holistic Risk Management” at the Rathgen Research Laboratory and in cooperation with the Berlin Emergency Network.
When and where?
Session will take place from Tuesday, 2025 November 18, to Friday, 2025 November 21, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. each day in the Remise of the Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection at Spandauer Damm 7 in 14059 Berlin (Charlottenburg).
The maximum number of participants is limited to 40. Therefore, please briefly describe your motivation and professional background in 100 to 200 words. Please send your “CPRAM 2025 letter of motivation” for participation in the course by 2025 October 31, to the functional mailbox: cpram@smb.spk-berlin.de.
You will be notified within 10 days whether you have been accepted. The Rathgen Research Laboratory office (030 266 42-7100) will be happy to answer any questions you may have by phone.