Great thread Paul. I have several views which are obviously debatable. Firstly, folk clubs have not evolved in 50 years. Numbers have dwindled since the heyday and look as if they won't recover any time soon. I put this down to a lack of foresight by many organisers. Many traditionalists will not embrace change or the advent of youth. Clubs will only survive when the next generation are encouraged to come along and partake or listen. The only way to do this is to dangle the carrot and tease them in. After all, it's not as though the youth of today aren't interested in the music. How many teenagers do you see at festivals? I'd say its an awful lot. But how many of those kids do you see in folk clubs? Virtually none. I doubt we'll see the Damien Rice, David Gray, Kate Rusby crew stepping foot through the doorway of some dreary rundown building that offers a singaround and a raffle as the evening's entertainment. We have to give them something. Many clubs are now run in Arts Centres as we know. These clubs are some of the more successful clubs around. They put on a quality guest virtually every time and brand themselves as an acoustic or music club. Now, there's nothing wrong with calling it a folk club but organisers must accept that they really aren't going to tempt very many of the crossover/curious types through the door. Folk music, generally, in the face of the public, is still a laughing stock. Something to do with Aran sweaters, pewter tankards and beards. Oh, and the finger in the ear of course. We have to re-brand folk music as trendy, cool and , above all, very good indeed and worth listening to. If we don't want that and we are happy with the current format then we can't complain that nobody is going to them. If we prefer to stay as traditionalists then that's fine. We can continue to call them folk clubs and hold our raffles but we only have ourselves to blame when it all goes tits up! Let's invite younger local performers to do 10 minutes before the guest comes on. They'll bring a) their parents b) their mates c) their parents' mates. Now that would be good. Lots of new faces that are drifting into the unknown. Who knows? They may even have a good time!