Vintage concert of the year: Old-school crooner Tony Bennett, York Barbican, singing a cappella without a microphone at 88 in September. Also commended: The Seekers, York Barbican, May; Prince, Hit And Run tour, Leeds First Direct Arena, May.

Acting discovery: Lucy Simpson, 18, as lovelorn seaman's daughter Amy Potts in York Settlement Community Players' Rohilla in Whitby, Scarborough and York, in November.

New location of the year in York: Fibbers music bar moves to Toft Green; better floor space, better sight-lines, better for the acts too. Runner-up: Fossgate Social, Fossgate, union of artisan and arty, coffee and beer, brick and wood, photographic exhibitions and divine cakes.

Best war memorial event: Sam Lee and The Unthanks, A Time And Place, musical meditations on The First World War, Howard Assembly Room Leeds, September.

Best touring production: Headlong's account of George Orwell's 1984 at York Theatre Royal in September. Impossible to stage? Not any more as language, multi-media, sound and vision forged one hell of a futuristic vision. Outside York: WarHorse's first visit to Yorkshire, Bradford Alambra Theatre, May and June.

Most moving experience: Within This Landscape, Common Ground Theatre Company, August. York playwright and actress Hannah Davies's audio walk and her sister Jessica Watson-Cainer's art installations in and around Coxwold, re-tracing the life of their late mother, lost to a car crash.

Festival of the year: Aesthetica Short Film Festival, 300 films, 15 locations, four days, York's past and present in perfect tandem. November. Runner-up: York Curiouser; nine artists installing works in York's hidden corners, such as Karen Thompson's ceramic sandwiches, for passers-by to find by chance.

Favourite "alternative" location: York Guildhall Council Chamber for two thrillers, Theatre Mill's Agatha Christie play, Witness For The Prosecution, in March and April, and The Flanagan Collective's Sherlock Holmes: A Working Hypothesis, in August and September. Runner-up: Scarcroft Allotments, for Mikron Theatre's Till The Cows Come Home, June.

Grand Opera House show of the year: Sister Act, York Stage Musicals, nun better in 2014, September.

Grand dames of the year: Dame Edna Everage, farewell tour at Leeds Grand Theatre, February; rhinestone queen Dolly Parton at Leeds First Direct Arena, June.

Most welcome comeback: Vainglorious villain David Leonard's revitalising return to the York Theatre Royal pantomime after two-year hiatus, as The Dreaded Lurgi in Old Mother Goose, running until January 31.

Please come back: Sprite Productions, taking a breather after ten years of al fresco Shakespeare at Ripley Castle. Let's hope, Liam Evans Ford and Hester Evans's company returns in 2016.

Le Grand Départ spin-off of the year: Beryl, Maxine Peake's play about Yorkshire's greatest cyclist, Beryl Burton, in July. Returning to West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, from June 27 to July 18 this summer.

Yorkshire film event of 2014: Late summer/autumn release of The Knife That Killed Me, the experimental first film by Kit Monkman and Marcus Romer, combining Green Screen Productions' technology at Bubwith with modernist York company Pilot Theatre.

Exhibition of the year: York illustrator and printmaker Emily Sutton, Town And Country at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton, running until February 22. Runner-up: Trainspotting at National Railway Museum, York, especially Andrew Cross's film installation, Parallel Tracks; ongoing until March 1.