The Full Story
About
AVIA AREE — A Living Magazine is an independent Kansas City publication built around the city as it is actually experienced: neighborhood by neighborhood, storefront by storefront, story by story. Founded by LaRee Durden, the magazine covers small businesses, culture, history and architecture, wellness, style, food, art, and the everyday details that shape life across the metro. Original photography, local reporting, and strong visual storytelling sit at the center of the publication.
The magazine approaches Kansas City with curiosity rather than formula. AVIA AREE looks beyond the obvious destinations to document the people, buildings, businesses, traditions, and changing streets that give the city its character. Stories range from historical deep dives and long-form features to neighborhood observations, independent business profiles, visual essays, seasonal guides, and the daily Talk About the Weather editorial, which brings together what is happening across the city in one living snapshot.
AVIA AREE is also an evolving publishing studio and creative platform, combining editorial direction, photography, digital design, research, branding, and emerging technology. The goal is to build a modern local publication that feels considered enough to keep, useful enough to return to, and distinctly connected to Kansas City—while creating meaningful visibility for the people, places, and ideas worth paying attention to.
An independent Kansas City magazine documenting the city as it lives, changes and remembers.
Mission
AVIA AREE — A Living Magazine exists to document Kansas City with depth, curiosity, and care. Our mission is to tell the stories of the people, neighborhoods, small businesses, buildings, traditions, and everyday moments that shape the city—especially those that deserve more attention than they receive.
We believe local journalism should feel close to the people it represents. Through original reporting, photography, historical research, visual storytelling, and firsthand observation, AVIA AREE creates work that is useful in the present while also preserving a record of Kansas City as it changes.
We are building an independent publication that supports local culture, strengthens the visibility of small businesses and creative communities, and encourages people to look more closely at the place they call home. Preserve the source. Improve the presentation. Tell the story well.
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Vision
Our vision is for AVIA AREE — A Living Magazine to become a defining independent voice for Kansas City: a publication people trust to document the city with intelligence, originality, and a strong sense of place. We want to create work that feels current without being disposable—stories, photographs, and observations that remain valuable long after the day they are published.
AVIA AREE is building toward a modern publishing model where journalism, photography, design, technology, and community can exist under one roof. Digital storytelling is the foundation, but the vision extends into print, original photography, events, guides, creative collaborations, and a studio capable of helping local businesses and organizations tell their own stories with the same editorial standard.
Ultimately, we want AVIA AREE to become part of Kansas City’s cultural record: documenting what is here, recognizing what is changing, preserving what matters, and giving independent businesses, artists, neighborhoods, and overlooked stories a meaningful place within the larger story of the city.
