I can only speak for my particular patch of Sussex. The folk clubs are still fairly healthy on the ground - just around me there are clubs in Lewes (2), Horsham, Seaford, Chichester, Arundel - but sessions have certainly proliferated over, say, the last 30 years. And, as you say, the variety of music in sessions is much wider than in previous years. There's a monthly French session in a small, remote country pub just 10 minutes drive from me! Plenty of Irish sessions to be found in Brighton, and lots of mainly English tune sessions around Lewes. Open mics and singarounds - doing a bit of everything - all over the place.

Certainly one kind of folk process...