The current state of folk music in UK (Report from Lewes)

Lewes is the smallish (18,000 people) County Town of East Sussex
Let's start with the Lewes Saturday Folk Club workshops.
The workshops mostly last a full Saturday or Sunday & the tutor performs at the Elephant & Castle, White Hill, Lewes BN7 2DJ, in the evening. Booking forms can be printed from the website :-
www.lewessaturdayfolkclub.org/ about three months in advance.
The workshop programme for the remainder of 2019 is as follows:-

RILEY BAUGUS: US OLD-TIME BANJO WORKSHOP - Sunday 10th. November 2019
SIMON MAYOR MANDOLIN WORKSHOP - Saturday 23rd. November 2019
HILARY JAMES VOICE WORKSHOP - Saturday 23rd. November 2019
SIMON MAYOR FIDDLE WORKSHOP - Saturday 24th. November 2019
THOMAS McCARTHY TRAVELLER LIFE, SONGS & STORIES WORKSHOP - Sunday 8th. December 2019

Then into 2020 (and there may be some later additions):-

7 Mar - Narthen - Vocal harmony
28 Mar - Daoiri Farrell - Bouzouki
18 Apr - JIB (Jim Mageean, Barrie & Ingrid Temple) Shanties & sea songs
25 Apr - Ben Paley - Fiddle
6 Jun - The Wilsons - Vocal harmony
13 Jun - Emmanuel Pariselle & Didier Oliver - Dance music from Gascony
11 July - Alistair Anderson   Tunes by Northumbrian tunesmiths, any instrument
11 July - Dan Walsh   Banjo
5 Sept - Keith Macdonald & Ange Hauk - Dance tunes from German C18/19 Manuscripts.
12 Sept - John Kirkpatrick - Dance Tunes Any instrument
13 Sept - John Kirkpatrick - Singing
24 Oct - Bryony Griffith - Vocal harmony using winter & Christmas songs
14 or 21 Nov - Jody Kruskal US Old-Time for concertinas & other instruments

In addition, there are guest nights every Saturday night. fairly often with capacity crowds, apart from August when themed singarounds take place. One that I would like to draw your attention to for personal reasons is this one

1st February "ALL THE BIRDS OF THE AIR"
presented by Tina & Vic Smith

Tina and Vic present only the second performance of their new multi-media show that celebrates our feathered friends in song, tune, verse and lore.
The live performances will be interspersed with a few recordings of relevant songs from some of Britain's finest traditional singers.

There are also regular monthly sessions in five other pubs in the town - two for English dance tunes, and one each for American Old Time, Irish music and West Gallery singing. We have just returned from one of the Sunday Lunchtime tune sessions at The Volunteer - Very enjoyable with fifteen musicians and a very high standard of musicianship.
The are also two monthly mixed traditional song and sessions at village pubs with five miles of Lewes.
Three display dance teams are based in and have their practices in the town including The Knots of May which is regularly booked at all the country's leading folk festivals.