Of course you disagree Dave, that is your automatic default position to anything certain posters contribute and I, for one, am not even going to attempt to try and get you to change your mind - pointless exercise. Folk is easily accessible any night of the week where I live too - Dare say it is, but of course, that all depends on what your definition of folk is. It is obviously far different to mine and a few others posting here. Personally I do not want to go to something that purports to be a "folk club" and listen to poorly played and poorly sung Beatles and Eagles covers, I do not go there to listen to jazz, rock or hits from the shows. It would appear to me that you equate what folk (people) sing or play to being folk music - basically it isn't and Jim Carroll has done his damnedest to explain the crucial difference, unfortunately his efforts seem to have fallen on deaf ears.

Your approach to festivals seems to be one of "Never mind the quality, feel the width". It seems obvious to me that if a festival does not take place in the UK it should not be named, or feature, in a list entitled UK Folk Festivals, I dare say that you will disagree with that also. I wonder how many trad folk bands or solo artists get booked to play at the festivals listed that are described as Cajun & Zydeco festivals, jazz festivals, bluegrass festivals, blues festivals, dance festivals? Yet all seem to feel free to appear at "folk" festivals, but there again to be honest although billed as "folk" festivals they should be more accurately described as "Music" festivals. As Jim Carroll has said on previous threads you attend a "folk" festival, or go into a "folk" club and what you get ain't what it says on the tin.

No retorts with regard to "open mic" nights, pub closures, or PRS concerns.

Over the last couple of decades those attending folk clubs have gone from being participants who contributed and joined in to now being merely an audience. Why? Because the over-riding impression given now is that you have play something, preferably self-penned, to contribute. Being self-penned of course means that nobody knows the material being sung which reduces audience participation to zilch. The same material gets trotted out week after week and the crowd gets bored and doesn't bother to turn up. The folk club I attend regularly has about six Guest Artist nights per year, on those nights the majority of the regular performers at the "session" nights don't turn up because they can't play. On the nights that they do play, with the material that they play, nobody joins in with them. They are only interested in doing their own thing - you cannot build anything of any substance and meaning upon that base and expect it to survive.

There is no evidence at all of there being a 2018 UK Folk Revival.