The idea that everyone can sing is a laudable one, but bitter experience shows that this is not true. By all means have gatherings where people can be encouraged to sing in a supportive and uncritical environment, but let's not call these folk clubs. A folk club should be a place where one can expect to hear folk music, in all its aspects, performed by people with at least some level of expertise. Self-help sessions for people just learning the craft have their place, but shouldn't be marketed as public entertainment.

One of the problems with the sort of song session I have described is that there is little pressure on people to improve, if they will be applauded and encouraged simply for attempting to sing, no matter how poor their performance. As I said in another thread, if you're a club floor singer about to go on just before Martin Carthy it does encourage you to up your game.

There is a parallel world for instrumentalists, where there are "slow sessions" for those unable to keep up in a normal session. The difference is that these players are usually well aware of their limitations, and go to slow sessions in order to improve to the level where they can participate in normal sessions. I haven't seen this level of self-awareness or willingness to improve at a lot of song sessions, which is why I now largely avoid them.