I've been going to a folk festival for twelve years or more; it's gone through various phases with regard to sessions. When I first was there, there were sessions (sometimes several) in all the pubs, and informal ones where people had big tents. Seven pub sessions (as well as folk club stuff in pub rooms),plus the irregular stuff.

That's varied over the years, but inexorably downwards. The big pub changed hands; they wanted more room for selling and less for culture. The other pub changed hands ; restaurant, no room for hippies. The third pub had a quiz night.

The organisers responded; a tent in the big pub's garden. Unfortunately they made it an "event", with leaders. "Leaders" sometimes have an agenda; these did. The big pub tolerated an Irish session, perhaps because they couldn't stop them, but all the other sessions: Welsh, singaround, all that stuff, disappeared.

A crowd of mates of mine did mixed sessions in the third pub. Other people did stuff elsewhere I'm sure, but tell me about it.

As the years went on; the pub tent became an extension of the pub, with barbecue; the third pub kept going but more food and less room for music; the tent sessions dwindled as we all got older and no one else seemed to be doing them.

Sic transit gloria mundi (and all the other days of the week).