Students and community members are coming together to plan and paint an 80-foot-by-12-foot mural on the wall of T Galaxy, 206 Welch Ave., and project organizers want students’ help in deciding what it will look like.

“We need ideas. Sketches, drawings, poems — whatever,” said Ian Ringgenberg, graduate student in educational leadership and policy studies and member of the Campustown Students Association, the group that initiated the project.

Planning for the project began last year, Ringgenberg said.

“We just got this feeling that we wanted something fun and artsy and student-led in the area,” Ringgenberg said. “T Galaxy has this big, white wall.”

The group contacted the owner and received permission to move forward with the project. The group then faced the challenge of figuring out how to actually paint it.

“At some point, I think we all really realized that we had no clue how to paint a mural,” Ringgenberg said.

So the students connected with Ames Collaborative Art, a community art group founded in July.

Ames Collaborative Art has taken the lead on fundraising and coordinating the project, said Kristin Roach, the group’s executive director.

“It was kind of a perfect fit — she was kind of looking for that first big project,” Ringgenberg said.

Roach said that a core group of three to five volunteer artists will take all of the student and community submissions and unify them into a single mural design. Then the painting will be done by teams of volunteers — from school-age and up.

“Really, anyone can be involved in the painting process,” Roach said. “It’ll be a grid system. Almost like a paint by numbers.”

Additional shading and detail will then be added by the core artists.

But first the wall will need to be prepped. The current paint needs to be scraped off and the wall needs to be washed and coated with an anti-fungal agent and primer.

“Last week of April, first week of May is when we’ll start painting,” Roach said.

Painting could take several weeks, depending on the weather, but Roach said she hopes to dedicate the mural during the first week of June. When students return for the fall semester, they’ll be greeted by a more colorful Campustown.

And it’s just the beginning for Ames Community Art.

“The mural project will be our first public work,” Roach said, but added the group hopes to continue producing. “We’re planning for an annual mural or large public-scale work each year.”

The group is applying for several grants to fund the Campustown painting project.

“The whole project from start to finish is going to be about $8,000,” Roach said.

“Almost all of it, except for $200 has been donated or spoken for or donated in-kind.”