Why advertise like that? As someone suggested, it could be that the venue rather than the club is doing that. A second reason is that folk clubs like to maintain that open to all image - it sounds good but in some rare cases I suspect the claim is purely part of an ego trip...

As an aside, I learned last night that I was part of a "clique", not one based on personalites in terms of egos or on musical ability - I fall short in that department compared to others and even a beginner would be welcome there but one based on music, i.e. you play the music they love (Irish Traditional and anyone can start their own tunes - no it has to all be our sets, everyone gets the same support) for the love of the music and try to have or develop some feeling for the dancers (real or imaginary) that the music is really about...

Maybe that sounds too precious to some and I'm not into cliques but in this case, I feel quite honoured to belong to what I feel is a group of like minded people in terms of an approach to the music in a traditional music session (my own tastes for example are wider than just that, I enjoy "celtic rock", and other mixes too...).

Jon