Pensacola MESS Hall, Science museum in downtown Pensacola, United States.

Pensacola MESS Hall is a hands-on science museum in downtown Pensacola, Florida, founded in 2012 by Megan Pratt and Jerry Pratt. Visitors use mess kits and individual activity stations stocked with all the materials needed to explore a scientific or mathematical concept through their own experiments.

Megan Pratt and Jerry Pratt founded the Pensacola MESS Hall in 2012 in downtown Pensacola. In 2014 the museum received an Impact 100 of Pensacola grant to create MESS Hall Express, an outreach program. Two 2016 grants expanded that outreach: a Disney-supported Creativity Garden grant funded Tinker-Explore-Create workshops at a local school five times that school year, and GlaxoSmithKline funded Science in the Summer at local libraries and community centers.

The name MESS stands for Multi-Exploration Science Station, reflecting the philosophy of learning through hands-on experimentation. Throughout the space, you see people of all ages working together at stations to discover scientific phenomena for themselves.

The museum is located downtown and easy to walk to from nearby areas. Plan for at least two to three hours to move through the different stations at a comfortable pace.

The MESS Hall Express program brings mobile science stations directly to schools and communities around the region. This means science education reaches people who might not otherwise have access to these kinds of hands-on learning experiences.