Most of this thread laments the fact that "they" arent interested in trad English culture..."they" being the general public, or the TV, or government supported funding bodies etc etc. But how about "we". Just how interested in Englisg trad are folk club organisers, for example? Or audiences? I play in a band that does English traditional music, and the number of folk clubs that have booked us in the last year is(give a minute with the calculator)...one. Now you're at liberty to say, tha's because you're crap, but I dont think that is really the answer. Because we work loads in Ireland, where you get pretty discerning audiences, and people love the English stuff we p[ay, and come and talk to us about it and play tunes with us and buy us Guiness and so forth.   
    And I'm singling out English folk CLUBS here, which you would think would be the very core of interest in English traditional music. Festivals are a bit different: plenty of people turn up if we run a northern english tune workshop or whatever at a festival, and learn tunes and talk about them. But the average folk club has no interest at all in what we play. Some say it is because they have all been taken over by song-writers, I dont really know, my experience is currently very limited. Any thoughts?