clubs involve local communities, or should do.
Villans club and Swindon clearly do.
people should feel the club belongs to them,they should be places where communities get to know each other using music to breakdown barriers.
Festivals by their annual nature cannot do this as effectively,this is why clubs are important.
multi national capitalism would love to see communities weakened,support your clubs.

Well said Cap'n. That's one reason I think the 'grass roots' type clubs (where anyone and everyone can 'have a go') are important, as opposed to the 'concert' type clubs, where only artists that are already established are invited to take the stage.

Although I often attend the 'concert' type clubs, because I think they do have a role to play in terms of providing venues where established big names can perform and earn reasonable money, I note that many of the attendees are 'incomers' who may have travelled a long way to see a particular act. The next week at the same club, will largely be a different crowd, with the exception of a handful of locals.

Nothing wrong with that per se, but if every club operated that way, there would be nowhere for new performers to learn the ropes and establish themselves enough to perform at the big venues.

I'd like to see concert clubs do more to encourage local talent, perhaps by having occasional session nights instead of just guest nights. At present they seem to rely on other smaller venues to nurture new people, without doing their bit to help this process.

One idea seen at a local club is to have a sort of local artists' 'festival' occasionally, with a reduced entrance fee (the artists won't be paid a fee, although they will get free entry). This will showcase up and coming local artists who might well manage to get the odd booking from it. The punters seem to like it as it's a change from the regular guest nights, and they get a (hopefully!) good evening's entertainment on the cheap for a change. Maybe some of the concert venues could consider staging something like this once in a while.

As the Cap'n says, the community aspects are important, and that's one reason I like my local club, where I can perform occasionally myself, as well as see other, more established artists occasionally. Meanwhile I've made a lot of good friends who I enjoy meeting every week, whether doing a turn myself or not. I don't tend to know as many people at the concert club I regularly visit - not that they aren't friendly, just that the 'regulars' are few because most are 'incomers'.