Following week 1 and week 2, yesterday's session dealt with "taste and 'taste'". Part of the thrust of the evening was to use the different meanings of the word "taste" but, ironically, for me part of the problem I had with the evening was the confusion in the way the word was being used.

A minor example came during the discussion following the first exercise, a fun task which involved tasting each of three different bowls of crisps. We then had to rank the crisps in order of preference before discussing our opinions with three other people. This illustrated how such an approach is unlikely to achieve consensus and how, in this context at least, taste is a rather personal quality. (One lacking in my case, because of the meal I had just consumed in the Turkish restaurant next door, but never mind.)
The problem here was that people seemed to be confusing taste with flavour and while this presumably would have been just as valid an attribute to compare, the resulting cross-purposes in the discussion were rather distracting.
A more serious problem, for me at least, came when Nigel progressed to examining whether taste is indeed only a personal assessment or whether there is a broader assessment. And if the latter, who is qualified to carry out that assessment ? The trouble here is the very fact that taste can be used in the sense that something is "to my taste" but also in the sense that something is "in good taste". More confusingly still, Nigel seemed to be using the word in a third sense, that of being of good quality.
Had these three different definitions been spelt out at the start, the subsequent discussions could have been more fruitful, I felt. We could all have accepted that a given work could have any one of the eight combinations of (a) being to one's own taste, or not, (b) being in good taste, or not, and (c) being of good quality, or not. We could then have concentrated on what potentially would have been an interesting discussion of how any individual can decide whether a given work is in good taste or not, and whether it is of good quality or not.
Possibly because of the confusion in terminology, our discussions were rather lengthy which in turn meant that our time for a gallery exercise was shorter than usual, a shame given that for me this is typically the most rewarding part of these evenings. The exercise this week involved our considering a work in the surrealist section and trying to decide whether it was of good quality or not.

My team looked at Magritte's Annunciation. There was a little conflict in our team because one member thought one should do this by consideration of the work itself (was it well composed, were its contents interesting) while another member (OK, it was me) thought that one should do this by considering whether one had heard of the work or not.
That seemed a difference of approach which might have warranted further discussion and exploration but, alas, time ran out.