The Snail, you're missing the point. Nancy Wallace and plenty of other people like her (see some of the names on Matt's list as examples, but there are plenty more) haven't built up a following or reputation via any of the routes you mention and primarily play to an audience that isn't particularly engaged with the mainstream folk world that you so accurately describe.

All leaps of logic around "monolithic organisation surrounded by impenetrable walls" and what many or may not be "trendy" (a wonderfully vintage word from an earlier era, that!) are purely your own inferences from things that haven't been said. Liking an off-piste artist does not imply that everything on-piste is rubbish.

Personally, I think the fact that there are people outside of the known and established folk firmament playing folk music to largely non-folk (in the on-piste sense) audiences, is in every way a good thing. If certain sections of the folk world (such as fRoots - which has one foot in and one foot out anyway - and now, tentatively, the BBC Awards) are showing signs that they recognise there are interesting things afoot out there, good for them.

I'd imagine a lot of the people who are part of the mainstream folk world would really enjoy Nancy's album - it's warm, woody and beautifully done and she has a wonderful singing voice.

Stuff like this is surely a cause for celebration not prickly defensiveness?