Hello all, and welcome to what we hope is the start of something big…

As you may know the UKTF recently celebrated its five year anniversary, in fact we’ve only just got around to clearing up the debris. During that time we’ve seen several different incarnations of the forums themselves until we’ve finally ended up with something that (normally) works well and gives us the flexibility we need. We’ve seen a solid community grow and, by and large, haven’t had too many problems with flames and dodgy users for which we thank you one and all.

We’ve seen gatherings start to pick up in both frequency and attendance. We’ve seen more and more munches cropping up around the country. We’ve seen people meeting up outside of the organised events for fun and games. And now, we’re looking to step it up a notch.

So what are we planning? Well, firstly you’ll be seeing a fairly major revamp to our on-line presence. We’re keeping the UK Tickling Forums but it will become part of the Tickle Brits web site. There are some changes to the forum itself with a couple of existing forums being tweaked, the introduction of a new “social” forum for arranging munches, gatherings, purely social get-togethers if you’re after a drinking buddy for the afternoon and… and something else that we’ll get to in a minute. The biggest change though will be our new “Ticklepedia”. This is intended as a one-stop shop for anyone interested in tickling as a fetish or the UK tickling community. Straight forward and frank articles about a range of subjects related to our common interests with a related discussion topic in its own dedicated forum which will be christened “The Reference Library”.

We’re very excited about these changes and are looking forward to the challenge of not only bringing them all on-line but managing what we hope will be a significant expansion of the community here in the UK as a result. However if we’re going to expand the on-line community it only makes sense to do the same for the real world aspects.

First up, munches. We’ve had a great deal of success this year with holding munches in Bath, Birmingham, Leeds and London and we’re looking to grow this significantly in 2009. We’re currently working to a loose target of 10 munches in the year spread throughout the UK although hopefully we’ll do better than that.

Next, gatherings. This year we’ve seen one regular gathering in January and a beginners gathering in June. In 2009 we’re hoping to double that to two regular gatherings, one in February, one sometime around September, and two beginners gatherings. We’re gaining experience all the time in how best to run these events and hopefully you’ll see some very interesting twists coming down the line as we go along.

Thirdly we’re looking at introducing a new category of social event – Workshops. These would mix the social atmosphere of a munch with a short event, probably no more than an hour, focused on demonstrating a specific topic relating to tickling. We’re still in the process of working out the specifics of how, where and when these sessions will run as we want to provide a truly exceptional experience and more details will be announced closer to the time.

So how are we going to do all of this? Well, that’s where you come in. The UKTF has always been built around an active community helping itself to grow and have fun and this isn’t going to change any time soon. What we are going to do, however, is try to make it easier to organise munches and gatherings (and, eventually, workshops) by introducing a Tickle Brits guide for each event. These will include some basic tips and hints on common problems and, more importantly, a set of rules to follow. These rules are designed to ensure that everything is run safely and that you know that, if you’re attending an event organised through Tickle Brits, it will (hopefully) be run responsibly. We’re also going to make it easy for anyone thinking of organising an event to get help and advice from those that have gone before by launching ‘round table’ groups for both munches and gatherings. If anyone wants any advice just e-mail a member of that group or post in the advice thread within the relevant sub forum.

That’s the basic plan at least, but it’s not the full extent of our planned changes. We’ve got a lot of ideas kicking around at the moment for some truly outrageous events but, of course, we need to walk before we run. We need to get these changes up and running and, most of all, we need your support and participation to make them a success. But who knows, if everything goes as we hope it will maybe in a year or two we’ll all be gathered around a stage in a private fetish club somewhere looking back on this as the start of something not just big…. but spectacular!

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