Since this topic is still lively I'd like to explain about the club that sparked it off.

It's a new club in Loughton, Essex UK (It's on the tube - do drop in)and is just coming up to its' third weekly session this Thursday.
Althought it is called a "folk club" I am happy for any style of music to be played as long as it is acoustic. And although it is a "club" there are no members - it is open to the public, "Loughton Acoustic Music Thing" doesn't sound right so it is called "Loughton Folk Club". There is a small entrance charge which is to cover the use of the room and to go towards modest expenses.

I wanted to do something different. There are several clubs not too far away where everyone gets a go. They're great clubs and I enjoy them, but I recognised that a number of people are driven away when much of the perfermance is limp.

So I've decided to shift the emphasis a bit. We have 15 minute tune sessions, ukulele sessions and chorus song sessions and about 2 hours of "hosted" floor spots. They are like mini "features" where a local competent performer does about 3 of their own numbers and introduces 3 single-song floor spots. The idea is to promote the best locals and have popular performance spread throughout the evening. It also naturally reduces the numnber of floor spots to about 12. The question is how to select those 12. I prefer not to just take the first 12 - not everyone can make it to the start of the evening anyway. So I want to favour competent performers (they may agree to become "hosts" later) and people I haven't seen before.

So this is the context in which I made the original post. So given that I am running it in this way, how would you chooses those 12 ? (if you can still bear it after all this dialogue)
Cheers