"why well run folk clubs are important, is because ( I suspect ) the age group which most of us are, enables to congregate for friendship, old acquaintances meet some new people and share music ,songs and performances in a genre of Music to which has given us all lots of experiences over the years . I do sometimes fear at times that we are veering into a Darby & Joan scenario, with the seemingly absence of younger performers being whisked off to bigger venues, before they've served their "apprenticeships" and as a consequence got to know the grass root audiences and organisers.
A big "Well done" to those who have persisted, and kept clubs going, esp. those mentioned who have served their clubs for 40 odd years.
There is a VAST difference to a performance in a Civic Centre and a Club room - shitey beer,( probably can't take it inth auditorium with you),impersonal voyeurish atmosphere, instead of an intiminate congregation of of performer and audience .People who attend get their night of entertainment from it ,and big venues are rightly agreat benefit to performers, but unfortunately or otherwise , subscribers to this Site , myself included, still have values and expectancies of a performance , which , who knows , may be running-like ourselves , out-of-steam.
As for the Wag who wrote earlier - "good enough for f*lk'/'why bother to tune', the South tried to foist self-publicist B.Bragg onto to the folk scene and I have never knowingly heard him with his guitar in-tune. Why he has made a good living in the South/London ,and never featured in the North whether in a Civic centre or a pokey Folk Club might tell us more about "why well run folk clubs are important", and, I say thank goodness for them.

Cheers

Betsy