Hottest tickets for seats at the Proms have probably all gone already. Yet the beauty of it is that so long as you start queueing early enough you can always get to hear the greatest, or rather the most popular, artists, for £5 in the Arena which is of course easily the best place to be acoustically in the notoriously unpredictable Royal Albert Hall. And don’t say you’re too old to stand: a 91-year-old student of mine – her name, Grace Payne, needs celebrating – has been doing it, with a few breaks overseas, since 1947, and she’ll be there again this summer.

Don't on any account miss the events in the selection you're about to read. Our rival outlets are currently bludgeoning you into submission with long lists of the many many cultural highlights of the coming year. They won't all be good, and you certainly won't get to all of them. We've taken a different tack, and distilled the concept down to an essence of excellence. We asked our critics to nominate the one indispensable, sell-your-granny-to-get-a-ticket event in their art form in the coming 12 months. Here's what they came up with.

ART

It is a truism that the great tradition of documentary filmmaking has long since migrated to the big screen. Factual takes time which costs money, and squeezed television producers rarely have enough of either. It's not uncommon for films shown in Storyville, the BBC's admirable international strand, to have started out with a cinema release. And yet somehow 2014 saw some very solid, respectable work in factual.

By far the majority of interactive art, entertainment and fiction – videogames for want of a better rubric – could be described as science fiction or fantasy. Very little of what you do when you pick up a gamepad has to do with real life. Even contemporary crime thrillers such as Grand Theft Auto or combat games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare take only a highly-stylised glance at reality. But most games allow you to be and do things that far outstrip any notion of reality.

Jazz. Is there any other term in contemporary culture so widely recognised, yet so difficult to define? Now in its 22nd year, the London Jazz Festival offers an annual global snapshot of the condition of this most disputed of music form, with the usual big names, but more excitingly, many new, young ones, which is what I have focused on here: acts indicative of the scene today.

It has long since become a cliché that the news of John F Kennedy’s assassination is implanted on the memories of those who remember hearing it for the first time. As that generation thins out, their children are now likelier to think of the breach of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago this weekend.

To celebrate our fifth birthday, we offer you an insight into what you, the readers, have devoured in the greatest numbers across the various art forms in both reviews and features. Google Analytics has taught us a great deal about your reading habits, which we try to cater to while always remaining faithful to the original instincts which prompted us to found the site: to provide prompt and knowledgeable coverage of the arts, to be reliable and also provocative, to go deep where necessary or, if less so, skip lightly over the surface. We’re nothing without you lot.

Robin Williams, who has died at the age of 63, was a very American comedian. The flow of invention that erupted from inside him had an unstoppable, domineering, emetic brilliance. In chat shows, performing stand-up, and in his greatest role as a DJ entertaining the troops in Vietnam, he was a not quite human force of nature.

Mozart operas – we’ve all been there, whistled the arias, untangled the love triangles (quadrants/pentagons), dabbled in some cross-dressing, and sung a rousing chorus of general forgiveness. But for every ubiquitous Don Giovanni or Le Nozze di Figaro there are at least two or three other operas that have drifted from the repertoire, rarely performed and little known. 1784’s L’oca del Cairo, anyone?

While you give your tent an airing in anticipation of festival season, think about the imaginative adventures your teenyboppers might enjoy – from colourful creative activities to bushcraft workshops and babysitting services, there’s much on offer for burgeoning revelers as well as their party-hardy-folks to enjoy. 

1. Cornbury, July 4-6, Great Tew Park, Oxfordshire