ABOUT JAZZIE

Jazzie Jelks is an artist, writer, speaker, Black Rural Futurist, and cultural worldbuilder from rural Northern Alabama.

Her work transforms Black Southern memory, beauty, land, home, joy, and imagination into future-making power through visual art, essays, public talks, films, games, field guides, and cultural frameworks.

She is the creator of BLACK RURAL FUTURISM™, an original framework that treats Black rural life not as a relic, but as a source of intelligence, design, memory, care, beauty, and worldbuilding.

At 20, Jazzie received a $75,000 Southern Artists for Social Change award from the National Performance Network to create Spotlight: Black Rural Life, a multimedia project celebrating Black rural communities through art, storytelling, documentary work, and archival imagination. In 2026, she was selected as one of 350 young leaders from across the United States to serve as a delegate at the inaugural Aspen Ideas: Rising Generations gathering.

Across every medium, her work asks what becomes possible when home is treated as genius, memory becomes material, beauty becomes infrastructure, and ordinary life becomes a blueprint for the future.

Jazzie is available for speaking, interviews, commissions, collaborations, and aligned cultural partnerships.

THE FUTURE HAS A FRONT PORCH.

AND THE PORCH LIGHT IS ON.