WERE you in the vicinity of Gillygate in York on Monday this week? Did you see two figures wearing antlers and capes festooned with imagery of deer as they made their way along the street during the afternoon hours with their pop-up hermit's cave, camera, questionnaires and story of how St Giles became a saint.?

The deer duo were Gary Winters, co-artistic director of the performance art and theatre company Lone Twin, and Dr Claire Hind, associate professor and leader of the Theatre and Performance MA course at York St John University, who were marking the Feast day of St Giles, patron saint of hermits and nocturnal terrors.

It was all part of their on-going Gillygate Sleeps project to turn the spotlight on a street outside the city walls that has not been well archived, has come under threat of closure but is now the thriving as a haven for independent traders.

Claire and Gary's project also takes in a newly opened exhibition in the cafe bar at City Screen and a Super 8mm film that will be shown at York Art Gallery when it reopens next year.

Gillygate takes its name from the long departed St Giles Church – "if you look at St Giles streets around the country, they're always outside city walls or outside city centres, which reflects his status as a hermit, an outsider ", says Claire – and if you are wondering how plain Giles became venerated as a saint, the answer lies in the mythical story of Giles taking an arrow for a hind in his hand, having been nurtured by the animal.

The "hind" link with Claire Hind is purely serendipitous, but she and Gary wanted to celebrate what Giles represented, hence they defined their Feast of Giles day as an invitation to "live independently, dream independently, take an arrow for this street" in the spirit of Giles and the street's history as the home to "an eccentric artisan past".

Through the years, Gillygate has been home to small-hold farms; stables; 18th century housing; St Giles Church; a skating rink; tramlines and a fully working mechanical garage. Now it houses independent shops, cafes, pubs, music stores, vintage clothes shops, craft shops, an adult shop, hair salons, residential property and the Salvation Army. All life is here, and allegedly so are the remains of Dick Turpin. "It attracts a certain type of person with entrepreneurial aspirations and an independent spirit," says Gary.

For their exhibition centrepiece, Gary and Claire filmed both sides of the street over a 24-hour period, one 12-hour shift per side. Starting at noon, they worked their way down the street, Gary taking a photo every 12 minutes, three paces along, as day progressed to night and morn amid the changing light and the changing characters on the street that they met, from a bricklayer at 12.20am to a party host at 8am.

No cars are seen on the resulting photographic strips of the street as Gary took each photo when no car was passing. However, both he and Claire and members of the Gillygate community do appear, the creative artists in various guises from past shows, the locals offering to be in the photos, such as looking out from windows.

The photographs are accompanied by neon signs that reflect on Claire and Gary's on-going study of dreams, this time reflecting on how folklore recalls that the reclusive St Giles was forewarned of his death in a dream. The neon words come from speaking to people on the street and begin with a prefix, "If Only". The rest read, "I could hide"; "you remembered my name" and "we made something of this". "So they can be taken either as a question if you add 'If only' or a statement if you don't ," says Claire.

The photographs and neon signs will be on show at City Screen until October 3, and afterwards Claire and Gary hope they can be displayed in shop windows in Gillygate. Likewise, they hope to project footage from their Gillygate Sleeps film on to buildings in the street.

That is for the future. More immediately, Claire and Gary are flying to New York today to begin a similar project in the Big Apple.

More information can be found at garyandclaire.com and Gillygate Sleeps. Prints can be bought at info@garyandclaire.com