I think folk can be presented at least four levels aimed at attracting different audiences/participants.

(1) The concert - either festival main acts/concert halls etc, or folk club guest nights. Aimed at attracting audiences who want to see (or be seen with) a particular act. These audiences could be folk club habitués (or sons of habitués), or those who have originally come into 'contact' through tv, radio, other internet. In this case the act, or what the act does is the draw.

(2)The folk club (back room) environment, a social gathering of people with a common interest (ie folk).

(3) The session, usually tunes rather than songs, but run in a more public space. I would also include folk dance/ritual in this category, eg morris, long sword etc etc etc.

(4) Public space performs - pub bands, bar venues at festivals etc. Apart from festivals, where the acts are engaged by festival organisers, pub bands may be engaged by pub landlords with the aim of drawing punters into venues. One example of this is a pub in Brentford but I can't remember its name.

While pub acts may perform what is seen by those who take folk music more seriously a more stereotypical image of what folk song/music is, it does draw in customers who enjoy it - and enjoying something must surely be the first step in becoming more involved in folk. When we were in Dublin the performances in the pubs where we went did come under the stereotypical category, but we still enjoyed ourselves more than is we had gone to a pub with a large screen sports match blaring out.

London does have occasional folk concerts, and folk clubs, and sessions, but if we go to other public spaces - nothing - multi sports screens, fruit machines, juke boxes, but next to no live music, and what live music there is, virtually no folk - and what there is isn't widely promoted.

To a large extent, pub landlords need to take a lead, or be convinced to take a lead in this so that more folk song/music has a chance to be seen more in public, and if the interest takes off, then it would be promoted more - at that in turn would spark more interest in folk music, people wanting to here more and a wider breadth of what folk is about - and folk clubs re-emerging to cater for the demand. And so on and so on...

In the 19th Century every port had its sailortown, virtually every city had (and probably still has) its red light district. What city like London needs (not just the square mile) is its cultural district - not just the big business theatres but an area known for where visitors can see culture - of at least a representation of culture close up, vibrant, exciting - so tourist can come away and say - yeah, I've seen London culture first hand.