This one-day event brings together leading media academics and activists to critically examine current trends and trajectories in global worlds of media work, and to present strategies and solutions for improving and enhancing conditions of media and cultural production. The motif of ‘critical capacity’ invites reflection on both the current *inequalities, intensities and extremities* of over-loaded and under-rewarded media and cultural work and *the modes of redress, advocacy and action* currently available to the media worker.