We've got a lot to celebrate in 2016: 50 years since the Roundhouse became an arts centre and 10 years of transforming young lives through creativity. In celebration of this momentous year we embarked on a journey of discovery to uncover the stories from train-enthusiast accounts of our humble beginnings to real-life high-wire love stories, from week-long raves in the 1990s to politically-charged spoken word in the 2000s. So many incredible stories have emerged from the walls of this beautiful building.

Some enchanted afternoon in Camden Town… the Proms returned to the Roundhouse after four decades with a dreamlike fusion of sound, space and light. Ron Arad’s Curtain Call – a 360° installation of 5,600 sillicon rods – encircled the London Sinfonietta and audience in its luminescent embrace, a haze of microtonal music slinking through a sequence of glimmering projections.

What I want to know is: has there been a major upsurge in boys taking contemporary dance classes this year? And if not, why not? With the amount of male dancing in the media these days, the excuse that boys lack dancing role models just won't wash any more.

It’s quite a distance from the first performance of Monteverdi’s operatic cornucopia under the Mantuan Gonzagas’ imperious eye to this democratic celebration at the Roundhouse – 408 years, to be precise. Michael Boyd’s production takes us back even further, to those ancient Greek festivals of poetry and music which inspired the intellectual Florentines to fashion the art of opera in the late 16^th century.

Does Kylie exist without spectacle? Take away the 6ft headgear, the sparkly hotpants, the spangly corsets, the team of super-fit dancers dressed like futuristic liquorice allsorts, and what’s left? If you find whatever it is, please let me know. 

Trailing a string of Grammys and multi-platinum albums, and now a successful actress and purveyor of her own "My Life" perfume for good measure, you wouldn't think R&B legend Blige had much left to prove. However, she evidently sees it differently, and she ripped through this compressed and streamlined Roundhouse set as if lives were at stake.

Punctually, following a tension-building countdown, Elbow entered the blue-lit stage at London’s legendary Roundhouse, beers in hand, and gestured the 1500-strong audience into a mass toast. With his slight stoop, soft Manchester accent and wayward estate-agent appearance Guy Garvey’s frontman persona takes more from familiar folk Daddies like Loudon Wainwright III than from the styled superstars also headlining at the iTunes Festival.

The genteel north London of the Roundhouse isn’t the obvious venue for a ladtronica and bloke rock band. Especially one that’s recently come from headlining Glastonbury and is used to open horizons, and sound systems more dangerously ramped-up than Primrose Hill house prices. By giving a performance that wowed an audience of mainly young couples, Kasabian showed a character and identity that’s more nuanced than the standard hairy bloke depiction allows.

The cover of her new album, I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss, has Sinéad O’Connor sporting a black wig and latex dominatrix dress, a glammed-up guitar wrapped in her arms. Well, at least she made the effort. On stage at the Roundhouse she launched her fine new album sans latex or hair, in black t-shirt and trousers, still the shaven-headed siren of unbidden passions and complicated yearnings.

School’s out for summer, even Parliament is on recess, and the streets around my house are suddenly devoid of children, as families make for the hills (or at least the beach). It should be dead season for all but prommers (and the suffering residents of Edinburgh) but ballet in London has had the most extraordinary week of first-class acts, with the Mariinsky at the Royal Opera House, Sylvie Guillem and Russell Maliphant at the Coliseum, and now the BalletBoyz’ 10-strong troupe The Talent at the Roundhouse in Camden.