Benjiman, your challenge is a good one as long as 'doing something' doesn't mean 'running a folk club', because not everyone wants to run a folk club and its only one of many ways to skin a cat. I *am* doing something as it happens. It relates completely to making folk music, but it is not happening within that particular sub-genre of folk music, the folk club scene. As soon as I'm ready to share it with the world and not a moment before I will do: unless it turns out not to be *good enough*, in which case I'll have the good grace to keep it to myself. I imagine many in the folk club world - though probably not you, Benjiman - will not greatly approve.

"My point here is that both participative and "concert" events are part of the folk/ trad world"

So is mine. My 'issue' is with the third and probably smallest sector of Tom Bliss's venn diagram above (his post was a very helpful contribution to this discussion) the *folk club*. Many of its proponents here on Mudcat and elsewhere seem to think their corner of the folk world is the only one that counts for anything. The rest (the larger part) of the folk world are just seen as opportunists hanging on the coat-tails of the great god of folk - the folk club. Without the folk club, the mantra goes, none of them would exist. Poooph! That was the sound of scores of musicians and singers disappearing in a puff of smoke. Oh. It didn't really happen.

Folk clubs are ideal for those that like folk clubs. Good luck to all of you: I for one would hate to do anything that might spoil your enjoyment of something that is so obviously precious to you. I'm not going to start a campaign to get you shut down or set up pickets or turn up and shout obscenities. You're safe from me. But please do not assume the 'folk club scene' and for want of a better term, 'the folk scene' are symonymous, or that everything that exists beyond the hallowed walls of this peculiarly british and musty institution is wrong, irrelevant or a threat.

Before we know it bridge club members are going to be going round telling people who attend whist drives and poker schools that they are playing cards in the wrong way.