What is happening to our folk clubs?
At the risk of destroying the peace that has broken out in the last few hours, it depends what you mean by 'folk clubs'.
No, I am not asking for a definition; that way lies as many problems as another definition that I could mention. The fact is that what is meant by the words 'folk club' has changed a great deal from the type of uniformity of the way they were presented when I first started going to folk clubs when I was at school back in 1962. In the subsequent 57 years the form has mutated quite naturally into a variety of approaches that enables survival in the very different world of 2017.
Their development and change has resulted mainly through a relatively small band of local movers and shakers; the people who are prepared to give a lot of time and thought to the organisation and policy. Tina and I stopped running a weekly folk club in 2013 having started our first one together (I had been involved in my college folk club before then) soon after our marriage in 1966. I could not count for you the number of people who have said to us in the last four years, sometimes almost accusingly, "We do miss your club at the Royal Oak, you know." to which my reply of "Well, we are not the only people capable of running a club. How about having a go yourselves?" brings that conversation to a rapid close.
So now folk clubs range from everything from what are in effect regular concerts through to the loosest of social gatherings that get together to sing songs and play tunes. At both ends of this wide spectrum there are problems. At the formal concert end everything depends on financial viability, booking the right artists that will draw an audience that will cover the many costs involved. The limited number of sure-fire hall fillers on the folk scene is limited. Eventually this leads to a problem of the 'same old names' appearing too frequently increasing the financial pressure. The end happens in two ways. Either they become unprofitable and therefore not viable or the organiser becomes in effect a concert promoter and any pretense of being part of folk music disappears. There are two successful former folk club organisers in our area who are now concert promoters.
At the other end of the scale in the anything goes, anyone is welcome to have a go singarounds. There the problems are often to to with small cliques developing, of performance standards dropping, of the inability to attract new blood to invigorate. Audiences are not attracted by these ventures.
The ideal would seem to be somewhere in the middle. Somewhere where is a discernable policy,* where it is possible for outside performers to be booked at least occasionally to inject fresh ideas and approaches and as a performance standard guidelines are demonstrated.

Reading carefully through this before I post it (as we all should do) I can see that I am speaking in general terms and that there will be a number of exceptions and additions to what I have written, but I think that this should provide a brief overview. The fact that no-one actually tried to develop a basis for discussion earlier in the thread now seems surprising to me

* I wish that I could find the 'Aims & Objectives' policy document that I drafted and brought the initial meeting of the 5 of us who were going to be involved after our move to the Royal Oak in 1990. We spent the evening thrashing it out but having agreed it the 5 - all amazingly still involved in 2013 - never felt the need to change it.